#Justice league terra not as bad

[dcujargon]

Welcome to the Terra Hate Post

Go ahead. Hate. I'll put mine in the tags.

[fucksutawneyphil]

my toxic trait is as much as i talk ab jason and terra (and rose) as outlaws i think narratively it wouldn’t do terra justice bc to me she clearly is meant to continue on and become a justice league level threat. like i’m sorry to ME terra’s core characterization means she has to be one of the most powerful characters in everything she’s in and if she’s not what’s the point? then that doesn’t really force the world to face the question of what if a person not dedicated to good or bad but to gaining protection had so much power cities could be wiped if she wanted to. she doesn’t. but if she refuses to be controlled by anyone then she can never be “good” because goodness is defined by humility in many definitions, and why would tara willingly going back to humility when that didn’t save her

[linkspooky]

What are your thoughts on the Al ghuls?

My second favorite dysfunctional family (behind Slade Wilson, his ex-wife, his butler, his children and Terra which I collectively call the DeathFam). The Al Ghuls specifically Ra's Al Ghul and Talia are my favorite batman villains, sometimes anti-villain, and in Talia's case sometimes Anti-Hero (My Girl's got range.) Since you asked my thoughts I will try to give them as organized as possible but warning there are a lot.

1. On The League in General

The League, the Lazarus Pits, and the mythology surrounding them is one of the coolest parts of DC Lore in general. In my opinion the best portrayals of the league are when they are one hundred percent genuine about their ideals. One joke I like to make is that Poison Ivy and Ra's are both environmentalists, but unlike Poison Ivy R'as actually has a plan and resources. Ra's love for the world and his desire to save it is at the core of his character, and the reason he will not let himself die, or let go in any real way because his work is not done.

One aspect I do not like about the league is that they are supposed to be antagonists, but I wish Ra's plan was more developed than "kill a whole bunch of people so the resources can be split amongst the survivors." That's such a disagreeable plan Ra's point to make about how the whole planet is dying and nothing superheroes do is really fixing that problem is kind of lost. It's also as dumb as movie Thanos idea to snap and destroy half the life in the universe. If I were to tweak it, I would make Ra's agenda more in line of a communist revolution. That is get rid of the capitalistic systems that drive the destruction of earth's natural resources for endless production and profit. That change would make some of the leagues motivations and methods much more sympathetic.

The league would still be villains however, because even if in this tweaked versions their methods are understandable they're still a big huge cult. Which is an aspect that a lot of fans and sometimes comic writers seem to miss. In the microcosm (Ra's personal family) and the macrocosm (the whole league) the league is a cult centered entirely around Ra's ego, his ideals, his wishes. Even if you can sympathize with their ideas of revolution and go "Hey, that might work" the League is still going about it the wrong way because they constantly prey upon vulnerable minors and people on the edge of society and then raise them up into loyal pledges to a cause. A lot of real life fringe groups do this too. In this version the league recruits members because it's easier this way, which is in line with Ra's character. The whole conflict with Ra's is that he just will not let go of control, he talks about how he wants an heir to take over everything but that's never going to happen because he won't even let himself die. You could fix this too, take the league out of Ra's hands, reform it, and it could be a more genuine force for good. So yeah, my take is less the league isn't good because they assassinate politicians and have more revolutionary ideals, but rather the league is bad because they regularly groom minors.

2. Ra’s Al Ghul

Here is a comic panel of Daphne from Scooby Doo sword fighting Ra’s Al Ghul, mostly because I love it. 

Ra’s is THE Batman villain for me. If the Joker represents Batman’s completely anti-thesis, then Ra’s is Bruce, all of his ideals, his nobility, taken to their most logical extreme. He’s the definition of the noble demon. If you want to ready story arcs that I think show off Ra’s at his best, there’s the “Tower of God” storyline where Ra’s finds all of Batman’s measures against the Justice League he prepared in case any of them turned evil and then decides to use them himself. Then there is “Injustice 2″ which is one of the better depictions of Ra’s where he is at his most genuine to his goal of environmentalism and even at points sits down at the table to talk with the superheroes in a more peaceful manor on how they could be doing better. 

If the Tower of God storyline did not explain it to you, Ra’s reflects Bruce in good aspects and bad ones. The same relentless dedication that Bruce has to saving Gotham, Ra’s applies to the whole world. Ra’s also like other batman villains shows how a generally positive trait like Bruce’s insane levels of dedication can easily turn into a flaw. Bruce has no powers just his martial arts training, but just will not give up under any circumstances. Ra’s determination gets him into a horrible cycle of corrupting himself worse and worse over the years both due to overuse of the pits and also frustration at a world that refuses to change, and also shows in his inability to surrender power in any real way. 

The way Ra’s treats his direct family, and the league as a whole is also a dark mirror to Batman and the Bat Family. Now, I don’t believe that Bruce is raising up hero sidekicks as child soldiers... Suspension of disbelief people! However,  Ra’s genuinely does treat all of his children as tools for his agenda. As much as he has the capacity to love them, their needs and desires will always come second to his use for them. Ra’s is undeniably a groomer not in the sexual sense but in the sense he is using his position of power raising up and manipulating these minors to shape them into what he wants them to be. 

Ra’s also represents Bruce’s paranoia and the times where he abuses his position as patriarch of a family to manipulate his kids lives. Ra’s is undeniably the one who holds the most power in the Al Ghul family, and he uses that imbalance in power entirely to his own ends. What he creates is a cycle of generational abuse that lasts all the way until Damian.  Ra’s also represents Bruce’s sometimes toxic ideas of masculinity turned up to 11. My man is a 400 year old misogynist. He is obsessed with ideas like divine birthright, dynasty, legacy as shown by the way he once again treats his children. His oldest son is disqualified for being albino and therefore having a defect, Nyssa and Talia are disqualified for being born women. The fact that Bruce represents his ideal heir and he is a man with money and power the peak of what society considers is masculinity is you know, telling of his opinions towards gender. Bruce and Ra’s are both carriers of family legacies, who devote all of their money and power to their genuinely good goals, but Ra’s seems to believe that might makes right, the money, resources and bloodline he has makes him inherently better or even chosen. Which cycles into the reason why he will never let go of said power. 

3. Talia Al Ghul 

Talia is my favorite member of the family, she is also hardest to talk about because she suffers from two things number one being wildly different depending on the writer, and two orientalism. Now I won’t discuss this much not because I don’t think it’s important but because I’m not qualified to talk on such subjects and a practicer of the “stay in your own lane” philosophy. The orientalism in Talia’s character is undeniably there, and also a part of a pattern in DC where female brown mothers are regularly villainized to make their white fathers look better. I think Grant Morrison’s take on Talia is inherent dehumanizing of her and kind of reducing her to a plot object, and also a deviation from the original ideas her character was meant to represent. I think also Talia has a habit of being reduced to her relationships to the men in her life rather than her own person with you know thoughts and feelings. Women have those. The league also as a whole is orientalist as a concept there’s really no getting away from that. 

Just as an example of how Talia and Damian’s relationship could be better depicted than it currently is in comics. There’s a storyline in the fourth season of Young Justice that I really like (even though I don’t like the cartoon that much) which explores the family dynamic between Cheshire, Roy and Lian. Cheshire attempted to stay with Roy to raise Lian for awhile, until she went back to the lifestyle and could not give it up. Her sister Artemis eventually goes after her and it’s revealed that Cheshire left Lian with Roy not because she chose being an assasin over her but Cheshire believes she is inherently bad and harmful person and has too much in common with her abusive father and if she is in that kid’s life she will only hurt them. It also ends on a hopeful note that if Cheshire puts the work in on becoming a more emotionally healthy version of herself she could return to that household. 

Now that that disclaimer is out of the way (please don’t yell at me for this I love Talia. If you want to discuss it further please use my askbox, I don’t like it when people reblog my posts to argue with me.) The most interesting aspect of the Demon’s Head is the generational abuse storyline. There’s no two ways about it, Talia repeats the cycle with Damian. That’s what makes abuse generational. Once again the whole storyline from conception of Talia having a secret love child with Bruce is kind of orientalist but you have to work with the plotline you got. At least until somebody retcons it. 

Now I am going to go on a long diatribe on how Talia repeating a cycle of abuse that starts with Ra’s does not make her an inherently bad person. This is where I am qualified to talk because I’ve done a lot of research into this subject! Talia grew up in a cult. Not only that she was the direct daughter of the cult’s leader. In the microcosm Ra’s family is what you would call a Narcisstic Family Structure: a family centered around one person’s individual needs where the other’s needs go underlooked. In the macrocosm it’s a goddamn cult. 

People view members of cults as either stupid, or immoral for joining because they imagine it could never happen to them, but the way cults work is by preying on vulnerabilities every single person has. 

No one joins a cult voluntarily; they are recruited into it. There is lack of informed consent. Everyone has vulnerabilities. Possible situational vulnerabilities include illness, the death of a loved one, breakup of an important relationship, loss of a job, or moving to another city, state or country. [x]

Haruki Murakami wrote a book named “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.” It is a non-fiction book containing several interviews of victims in the aftermath of the Saren Gas Attacks. This is a real life event where the Aum Shinrikyo Cult convinced its members to release Saren gas in several subway trains. While the attack was viewed by society as an act of fringe extremists, the cult was made up of members who were educated people, doctors, lawyers, who were still somehow convinced this was a good idea. 

The interviews highlight many intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche. Work was a high, if not central, priority for most of the interviewees. Isolation, individualism, and lack of communication were also strong themes which were common throughout many accounts of the attacks. Many of the interviewees expressed disillusionment with the materialism in Japanese society and the sensationalistic media, as well as the inefficiency of the emergency response system in dealing with the attack.

The book also includes Murakami's personal essay on the attacks, "Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?" In this essay, he criticizes the failure of the Japanese to learn from the attacks, preferring to dismiss it as the extreme act by a group of lunatics rather than analyze the true causes and prevent similar events from occurring in the future.

I bring this up once again to reinforce the idea that anyone can be preyed upon by a cult, and Talia was literally born into that environment. Clts also operate with a specific method of cutting off their members from the outside world to cut off their ability to leave (BITE: Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotional Control). Talia grew up in an environment where most likely all her social interactions and her contact with the outside world was controlled by Ra’s and only Ra’s because in most versions her mother dies early in her life usually in some horrific way. 

That’s not even getting to the kind of parent that Ra’s is. He is always a really outwardly loving parent to Talia, but that love comes with a big huge asterisk. Ra’s loves his children until they either have a defect, or they decide to be someone other than what he wants them to be, at which point he either cuts them off, or relies on emotional manipulation to regain control. Talia’s only parental figure was both extremely loving, but made it clear that love was conditional. Even if Talia tries to live up to Ra’s expectations of her and be what he wants her to be, she’s immediately disqualified from actually taking on the mantle she was groomed for her entire life by being a woman. Even the original concept of Talia’s character who is much more anti-hero than anti-villain chooses her father over Bruce at times because Ra’s conditional love is what she knows, whereas Bruce’s love for her is something she does not understand fully even if she desires it. 

I’m going to bring up my favorite comic book character Terra here. Terra was also a character who her creators have said several disrespectful things about and she was not created by the best of intentions. However, Terra is a unique character because she is one of the few grooming and CSA victims who is allowed to be downright unlikable, to show her trauma in what are considered to be traditionally bad ways. She’s a character with flaws and agency and stuff. Terra represents a specific kind of fifteen year old kid who usually does not get help and adults believe is a lost cause. Characters who carry Terra’s trauma either magically get over it, or they are just reduced to weak, pitiful shells. I’d rather have Terra be the mess she is than either of those things. It’s honest to a reality that certain people face, and also shows victims who would not normally get sympathy. 

I just went to great length to establish the horror of Talia’s upbringings so she’d undeniably be affected by it. I won’t even mention what kind of mother Talia is because wildly depends on the author, but the decision to raise Damian in that cult rather than try to leave is her perpetuating the cycle. This is something that happens in real life too, parents who are preyed upon by cults will either drag their kids into it, or raise them up in that same life when they are young and vulnerable. It’s undeniably something she did to Damian and deserves to be called out on. 

If Talia shares Ra’s nobility and idealism she also reflects his bad qualities as well, his belief in special people, of causes that succeed individuals, of noble purposes. Especially since these are toxic ideas that Ra’s has essentially forced onto her. I don’t even think Talia is past the point of redemption or incapable of learning to be a better mother, because while abuse is a chain it’s also a chain that can be broken. 

4. Damian Wayne / Al-Ghul

To begin with I don’t think Bruce is a good parent to Damian, and Talia is a bad one. They both kind of fail Damian in equal and totally different ways. I don’t believe Robin is a child soldier, but right away making Damian Robin is kind of a mistake because Bruce makes him Robin to try to fix some perceived flaw from being raised by the League, when really Damian is more or less just a ten year old kid reacting how any ten year old kid would if they were groomed their entire life and had that kind of destiny practically forced upon them. 

The difference between Talia and Damian is of course, Damian got out of there which gives him a unique opportunity that Talia didn’t to make connections outside of the League and to the outside world and therefore learn to think in different ways then how he was raised to think. Damian represents the chance to break the cycle of generational abuse passed down from grandfather, to mother, to son. 

Because like I said Damian reserves the right to call out his mother for not choosing to put him first, but at the same time Damian undeniably loves his mother. Even in the storylines where they have a strained relationship at best Damian is fiercely loyal to her because essentially Damian and Talia want the same thing which is to have a loving family of their own, and to be their own people outside of their usefulness to other people (cough, cough, Ra’s). 

Damian’s character arc tends to repeat a lot but there are more modern storylines that are pushing Damian in this direction where his goal is a reconciliation of the past and to be able to move on with a healthier version of their relationship. Ra’s getting shot in the head helped a whole lot. 

Damian represents a chance to break the cycle for both himself and his mom, because like I said Talia isn’t an inherently bad person, or a bad parent, she just like anybody else has an opportunity to grow and develop as a person especially if one day she gets to finally move on from the league. People can be influenced by circumstances, but also circumstances change and in better environments people have a chance to do better. Damian isn’t obligated to forgive either parent for the ways they’ve failed him but at the same time he clearly wants a connection with both of his parents, and is willing to work with them on it. 

It is funny how Damian typically gets portrayed as the edgy Robin, because in my mind he’s actually one of the most normal ones. He acts like a thirteen year old boy, with the needs of a thirteen year old boy, he desires a normal life outside of capes and costumes. He just has been told he’s the chosen one all his life and that’s had an effect on the way he views the world. Damian has every chance to break the chain that Ra’s started though, and that’s probably where the comics should go if they didn’t repeat the same plotline with him like nine million times. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Slade

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS! ALSO, TW: RAPE MENTION! It’s literally unavoidable when discussing this guy!)

Teen Titans was one of the great DC action shows of the 2000s. It danced back across the line of silly and serious with its anime-esque art style, goofy J-Pop theme song, and humorous characters all juxtaposed with incredibly dark villains, serious stories tackling everything from racism to the dangers of pushing yourself to your limits, and some shockingly brutal deaths that, while not onscreen, don’t leave much to the imagination.

And what would this show be without a big bad? And there really is no bigger bad than Slade.

Comic fans would likely know this man as Deathstroke the Terminator, or perhaps simply Deathstroke, which is one of the single most over-the-top names ever created. In the comics, Slade’s main claims to fame are that time he groomed a teenager and also had sex with her and, even worse, the time he soloed the entire Justice League!!!! GASP! He’s had some cool appearances in places like the Arkham series and the Snyder Cut, but if there’s any appearance that has redeemed this cunning assassin in the eyes of many is his appearance as the master schemer supervillain who served as Robin’s most personal foe and the most reoccurring threat over the course of the series.

Motivation/Goals: This man has made it his life’s goal to fuck with these teenagers (but not in the same way comic Slade fucks with teenagers, thankfully). Season one has him trying to turn Robin into his evil apprentice, while season 2 has him working to dismantle the Titans from within before he dies. Season 4 has him working for Raven’s father to bring about the end of the world, but then he backstabs Trigon to get his life back. Slade seems to be a sadist who loves making these teenagers suffer for shits and giggles, because I genuinely see no other reason he’d go to such lengths to torment children when he time and time again shows he could give heroes like Green Arrow or Batman a run for their money.

Performance: Ron Perlman, the one and only Hellboy, has the perfect voice for an evil, underhanded villain, and he gives Slade just the right level of menace while still maintaining an air of mystery and coolness. I’ll elaborate more in the final paragraphs, but long story short: Perlman is to Slade what Hamill is to Joker.

Final Fate: While he is constantly thwarted and at one point dies by falling into lava courtesy of Terra (something I wish happened in the comics), all setbacks to Slade are ultimately temporary, and he ends the series no closer to being defeated than he was at the start of the show.

Best Episodes: Slade is no stranger to awesome appearances, getting at least one great episode every season.

Season one has the two part finale, “Apprentice,” which features him finally taking Robin under his wing. It’s incredibly climactic as the whole season has built up to this moment, helps solidify Robin’s arc in the season, and gives a badass final duel between Robin and Slade. It also features one of Slade’s cruelest and most brutal schemes, with the torture he inflicts upon the other Titans when Robin doesn’t comply.

Season 2 has the condensed retelling of the infamous Judas Contract arc with “Aftershock,” particularly the second part where Slade is unmistakably and unambiguously killed. The dude straight up falls into lava and dies.

But even being dead doesn’t stop Slade! Season 3’s “Haunted” is one of the most dark and brutal episodes of the series, with some of the creepiest writing coming from Slade. What’s even creepier is there’s never really any answers as to what causes the hallucinations Robin experiences throughout the episode; it’s implied someone activated Slade’s mask, but who? We’ll never know. Either way, leave it to Slade to give us what might be the show’s darkest episode.

Season 4’s “Birthmark” has Slade at his absolute creepiest, which is saying something considering the sexual assault vibes of “Haunted.” This is the episode where he assaults Raven in incredibly uncomfortable ways while delivering the news about her father. It’s horrendously disturbing in an allegorical sense, and serves to make Sade more monstrous than ever.

Season 5 doesn’t have any Slade, sadly. There’s a fake Slade in the final episode, but that’s it. Guess the Brain didn’t want his gay ass upstaged.

Final Thoughts & Score: Slade is genuinely one of the finest foes to come out of the great animated series of the 2000s, and arguably rivals Mark Hamill’s Joker with how good he is.

It mainly has to do with how utterly fucking disturbing his plans are in a symbolic level. Isolating teens like Robin and Terra from their friend groups, forcing them to depend on him, the undertones of grooming in his interactions with Terra, and both Robin and Raven suffering through experiences with Slade that could easily be read as allegories for sexual assault. Slade manages to be absolutely repugnant and unsettling, and mind you a lot of this comes before he is resurrected as a zombie demon slave. Of course, despite being disturbing as all Hell, he still manages to be cool. This is mainly due to Ron Perlman’s stellar performance, which is easily on the level of iconic voice acting that Hamill’s Joker is ; he adds so much menace to everything he says while (un)fortunately making Slade sound incredibly sexy.

I think what’s most impressive is just how much better than the comic version the animated Slade is. In the comics, Slade has been the bearer of one of the corniest monikers in all of comic history: Deathstroke the Terminator. And while it’s often shortened to simply “Deathstroke,” the name is still the sort of thing you’d find in the edgy Liefeldian crap the 90s shit out. Add on to this the guy is an uninspired mashup of Frank Castle and Steve Rogers in terms of origins, the fact that he is the subject of such obnoxious character shilling he soloed the Justice League in the already contentious Identity Crisis, and that writers continuously bend over backwards to justify him grooming with and having sex with an underage girl to the point where they actively put the blame on said girl, who for the record is a fucking teenager while Slade fought in goddamn Vietnam, and you have a character who is just remarkably unappealing and easily overshadowed by his Marvel ripoff (one Wade Wilson).

Contrast with the show Deathstroke. They ditch the edgy name, leaving him with his canonical first name only, which adds this air of intrigue and mystery to the guy. They keep the super soldier strength and reflexes, but they don’t expound on the origins and instead make him more akin to an expy of Doctor Doom, what with the robot duplicates, unseen face, seething hatred for the team leader protagonist, and the complicated chessmaster schemes. And best of all, they keep all the creepy, skeevy undertones comic Slade has… but they don’t try and justify it! Slade is always portrayed as a conniving, self-serving schemer and an inherently nightmarish figure who sucks up the comedy whenever he’s onscreen. This is the character done right, and he easily scores a 10/10.

[melvin-dukowski]

Battletech eras.

Age of War: It’s the future and space colonization has given way to pseudo-feudalism and outright feudalism. This means the many different nation states are de facto controlled by one family and or a bunch of megacorporations. Because we have big scary warships we fight wars by parking our fleet above a planet and blasting it from orbit until they surrender or are all dead. Because everyone realized that border skirmishes shouldn’t result in millions dead we end up with the Ares Convention which outlines rules of war but also effectively legalizes it. Because demilitarization is only something hippies who believe in “human rights” want, all the Great Houses begin looking into alternate ways to kill each other without scaling back military spending. Some mullet having asshole back on Terra (Earth) decides to sink all the budget on some 100ton walker called the Mackie. Despite being kind of bad it did well enough to enter production. Thus beginning the Age of the BattleMech. Everyone immediately gets back to beating each other up over basically nothing.

Star League: A while later a descendant of the mullet having asshole named Ian Cameron is named Captain-Director general of the Terran Hegemony. An idealist, he wants to bring about an era of peace and cooperation. After annoying the other five houses enough they agree and Star League is born. A sort of EU type arrangement. They build up a singular military called the SLDF so the house militaries don’t need to be so big. Now that the Inner Sphere is together in peace Ian Cameron decides the one thing he hates more than war is those filthy rednecks out in the Periphery who won’t join his club, beginning a massive war against the different Periphery nations. One named the Taurian Concordat holds out for about 20 years and the SLDF resorts to nuclear genocide to finally defeat them. After that things are mostly smooth sailing for 200 years unless you’re in the Periphery, then you pay double tax and have no pay. This comes to an end when an asshole named Stefan Amaris kills the current ruler of the Star League and the entire royal family. The SLDF was out in the Periphery fighting a rebellion at the time so Amaris actually takes control. Deciding this is bullshit, the SLDF’s leader Aleksander Kerensky launches a blitzkrieg on Amaris’s own fiefdom. Thus beginning a 14 year long civil war where the SLDF and Amaris’s army beat seven shades of hell out of each other while the house lords just sit and do nothing. It ends with Kerensky’s forces liberating Terra and bringing Amaris to justice, but it’s clear that the Star League is dead

Succession Wars: With the Cameron family exterminated and the SLDF exhausted the Great Houses decide to strip Kerensky of his rank and formally dissolve the League. Kerensky is too principled to take power himself and tell the Great Houses to get back in line but smart enough to know that they’re all gearing up for the mother of all wars. He decides to take the third option. Him and 80% of the remaining SLDF fucks off into deep space along with as many wmds and advanced military hardware they can. The former communications office of the Star League also forms the ComStar corporation which may or may not become a religion. With Kerensky gone and a whole lot of real estate up for grabs the Great Houses begin a long series of wars. The first two see unrestrained war crimes and mass industrial destruction. By the time the third had started a lot of technology was gone and the overall tech level regressed a few centuries. The third sees mostly skirmishes and low intensity slap fighting for over a hundred years. The tabletop game’s main timeline starts around this point at the end. Then they find some stored tech and reverse the decline, and two of the houses unify and begin a fourth war to style on everyone else. Everyone prepares for a fifth for about a decade until...

Clan Invasion: Okay so remember the SLDF? Well the exiles settled a some worlds out there and after a bunch of drama the son of Kerensky created the Clans. A revolutionary society based on a caste system, eugenics and Call of Duty. They actually advance technology, breed 8ft tall super soldiers and make cool mechs that are OP compared to what ever trash the Inner Sphere’s got. They scout out with a fake merc company that ends up going native not giving back reports to the Clans so they decide to invade. Because using less resources is more honorable they only allow four clans to invade with three in reserve. The invasion steam rolls at first but 1v1 me scrub isn’t sound military strategy and logistics become a nightmare. The Clans would declare what they were going to attack and with what forces, and were shocked when the defenders would lie about what they were going to counter with. Meaning the Clans would get kited by guys in swamp buggies sometimes. Eventually the totally not a cult phone company stops the invasion by issuing a “fair fight” where the phone company just grinds the Clans down. The Clans are salty about this and begin in fighting which sees Clan Wolf split into Clan Mary Sue (good) and Clan Mary Sue (evil). The rest of the Inner Sphere recreates the Star League to beat the shit out of the clans, specifically Smoke Jaguar for being warcrime happy. They finally style on the Clans on their home turf and so ends the Clan Invasion

FedCom Civil War: Did you know that royalty is usually not a stable way for good leadership? Well two of the successors to the Steiner-Davion marriage end up being generic cold hearted bitch and generic luke skywalker clone so it was always gonna end up in violence. Just as the Davions and Steiners made their marriage everyone’s problem they also made their divorce everyone’s problem. The Free Worlds League and Capellan Confederation take back their stolen turf and the remaining Clans solidify their position. Jade Falcon rebuilds its man power by raiding science labs for recruits and the green warriors get to cut their teeth on actual combat, Ghost Bear gets super into Space Sweden and the two get hitched, both Wolves mostly try to out do one another, Diamond Shark makes bank and Nova Cat are a bunch of weebs. Ice Hellion attempts and fails and Hell’s Horses attempt and somewhat succeed.

Wars of Reaving: Basically the writers realized there’s too many clans. Basically the Clans were beyond salty about the failure of an invasion and it boils over in an orgy of warcrimes. After deciding the treaties were bullshit they elect a new ilKhan in Brett Andrews. Instead of beginning a new invasion he decides to go off on about “taint” and begins a campaign to purge other Clans. The Wolves, Jade Falcons, Ghost Bears, Hell’s Horses, Snow Ravens, Goliath Scorpions, and Diamond Sharks are told to fuck off. Fire Mandrill falls apart, Burrock is absorbed, Ice Hellion is also absorbed into Goliath Scorpion, while Blood Spirit and (ironically) Steel Viper are annihilated.

Jihad: Because the Star League was useless in stopping the FedCom civil war it disbands. This pisses of a splinter group of ComStar called the World of Blake. They split off because ComStar was totally not a cult and people who thought so can go fuck off and they made a direct competitor. But the WoBbies are fuckers and through a nuclear tantrum. They unleash nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and an army of fancy mechs and cyborgs. It’s a vaguely defined era of extreme violence that only ends when a dude named Devlin Stone unifies everyone else to buttfuck the WoB into next weak with nukes. Stone then creates the Republic of the Sphere in and around Terra.

Dark Age: This era kinda sucks. The writers thought they were bringing things back to basics by making things go to the succession wars style of setting. Basically a 50 year peace time falls apart and communications go dark so everyones back to fighting. All your favorite characters are either dead or geriatric and not a whole lot of interest really happens. Goliath Scorpions nation build a bit in the deep Periphery but thats about it.

ilClan: The current era. Basically Wolf and Jade Falcon invaded the Republic of the Sphere cause it was falling apart. They duke it out in Canada over who gets to be the top clan. Because Wolf can’t loose they win and become ilClan, the leaders of a third Star League. Jade Falcon becomes a body guard clan and Smoke Jaguar are revived for reasons. Hell’s Horses are mad because they didn’t get a chance to fight, Ghost Bear doesn’t care, Sea Fox (nee Diamond Shark) are making money still and Clan Mary Sue (good) are reabsorbed and now Wolf is the ultimate Mary Sue. People start beating up on their former occupation zone.

[hardcore-lonewolf]

❤️‍🔥KARMA❤️‍🔥

PLOT: Mouse has been missing ever since their newest member joined the Sidekick Squad and it's now Halloween. This thief got a major bone to pick with Terra when she defeated her in her disguise as Punchline, Onslaught told her that Terra was the mole right after meeting the new favorite right-hand woman of the violent mercenary and gave the JLA proof that'll lead to the double-crossing of sides. Mouse managed to defeat her loved ones, took those flash drives Terra Mater has on them, and her laptop into her old lair at Friedkin University rather than to the Council of Light and gave it back with a virus that sends evidence to the JLA. The Lucky Girl made the JLA realize that she's Punchline, she's going incognito with her skills and talents to expose the Light. During that time, Mouse made the cure and switched the mind-controlling chips with it. Now it's her time to reveal her truth and show her loved ones that she's not that shy girl they once know as Mouse...she became Catgirl after her training in Tokyo with her mentor Catwoman. Will her loved ones find out the truth or not?

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Characters: S1!Young Justice League/Team (MY AU), Elder Justice League of America (MY AU), New Crime Syndicate/Gang (MY AU), Old Crime Syndicate of Russia (MY AU), etc.

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WARNING: PLOT TWISTS, RE-EDIT OF EPISODES, FLUFF, ANGST, EXPOSING RUMORS, REVEALING LIES, SHOCKING TRUTHS, ETC!

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The junior league group were still heartbroken about their former member ever since she left for Anodyne to train with her alien grandmother and gave them one last gift...to hear her voice. Robin would never leave her room and wore her missing item...her crystal teardrop necklace. The Boy Wonder kept it all to himself, his best friend Kid Flash could tell that the vigilante misses his crush and fellow team member.

The Team decided on Thanksgiving to get Catgirl's number and call her on video chat. Their newest member Terra was nothing like the Lucky Girl and would always use Beast Boy for any single thing, though Catgirl tends to let the Team know that she's taking the young green mutant someplace else for fun. Raven grew instantly jealous and kept a close sharp eye right on the younger blonde girl after her older best friend told her to watch her back on the newcomer.

Aqualad, Wonder Girl, Superboy, and Miss Martian will sit in silence while holding back their emotions and spoke with each other in secret. The female demigod got a gut feeling about Terra's intentions, who's hesitant on hurting Onslaught and would only give them minor injuries. The Atlantean squire agreed with his girlfriend like their Kryptonian and Martian friends, they saw how Terra would dodge their hits and each member will never strike her.

"I want Mouse back in the cave beloved, Robin's been depressed for the past few weeks that I stayed with him every night and held his hand while he slept...that's how bad it is. He got nightmares and worried about her...Robin seriously loves Mouse, not as a friend or family, he has romantic feelings for her." Wonder Girl stated while holding his hand.

"My love, I truly agree with you, Robin's feelings for Cat hasn't left his system and it's messing with him. Black Canary sent an update last night on Mouse's whereabouts and told us her training on Anodyne. This could be the solution love, Robin reuniting with Mouse and telling his feelings to her." Aqualad told her in response.

"Either way guys, we gotta find out who's the mole cause Will found Roy and brought him back home thanks to Jade. Not only that...Jade pointed out that the Light led the mole to us and put mind-controlling chips on the League. They haven't activated yet, which means somebody has been helping our mentors and could be an ally of Will." Superboy said.

"If they didn't activate, that could mean they got a spy as well helping us and gave the League the cure before it all happened. Will and Jade did have some points about their new ally who gave them the cure, they sent us the Light's next plans for the New Year's Revolution from 2010 to 2011." Wonder Girl added. "Based on how the League's reactions and what they'd almost done, our mentors got those chips out and sent them to Star Labs for further examinations."

Miss Martian felt her phone vibrate, she takes it out and sees Mouse's number on it. She froze with shock and excitement before she presses the green answer button. The female Martian puts it on speaker and sees that it's a video call.

"Hey guys," the Team froze with disbelief to see Mouse with her natural ginger orange hair down and grown out to her waistline.

"Sup Mama, how's Anodyne?" Beast Boy asked while turning into a cat.

"Anodyne has been very great Gar, I learned a lot here and mastered my mana. I missed y'all guys, I was calling to say Happy Thanksgiving. I got good news to say and tell, so be prepared...my grandma's letting me go home back to Earth tomorrow...permanently. I finally unlocked all of my powers," the Team smiled and begun mentally cheering. "I know Robin's been hurting a lot, it's my fault that he's that way...I'll make it up to him and tell him how I felt. I love Robin so much, he's the only person I can see my future with...my family even told me that my visions aren't lying to me, I've found my destined soulmate and I've never thought it'll be him. When you see Robin, tell him that I said that I love him and I'm coming home. Okay, I gotta go hurry up and pack my things...this family reunion drove me nuts. Bye guys, I miss y'all."

Miss Martian hangs up and the rest sighed in thought. Cyborg and Starfire went to find the Boy Wonder, who heard the conversation and was smiling. Rocket and Zatanna sat next to Artemis, talking about a girl's night out with Catgirl in it at last.

Terra was frowning and silently seething in rage. She got everything locked and hidden in her own hands for the Light, which was good for now since the favorite henchwoman of his master's psychopathic clown killer ally got it from her to send out for the Light. She has to wait until Halloween to betray the Team and expose her lies.

On Planet Anodyne, Mouse put on her Punchline disguise while handing the JLA the proof and evidence they need against their enemies. The Dark Knight ruffled her hair and she nods up at him with a serious look on her face. His godchild grew confident and strong during her training in Anodyne, he's proud that she'll be there for his adopted son and become part of his family.

"On the night of Black Friday, I'll be capturing the Team and getting Terra Mater to confess her secrets. Once I'm all alone, this face paint comes off and this will be the end of Terra's reign. She tried multiple times to hack into the Super Computer and everything at each of our headquarters. I've been updating our bases by shielding our technology with viruses and codes that it can only unlock to my grandmother." Mouse explained to the JLA.

"And this is why we loved you for your hacking skills and super intelligence Eva." The Lucky Girl nodded as she puts on her gothic makeup and platinum wig. "Your amulet my dear."

Mouse puts on her amulet and it transformed her from the Lucky Girl to Punchline. Punchline took a deep breath and opens a portal to the docks. The JLA let her enter through the vortex and she mouthed out that she needs them fully prepared with inhibitor collars alongside power neutralizers.

As soon as Punchline gets on Earth's ground, the portal closes and she puts her poker face back on for her rebellious acts. The Scenery Countess begun her reign of terror while licking an ice cream cone, cackling and giggling with fake sinister madness in her own veins in a psychopathic lifestyle. Punchline does some parkour through Gotham City and found her targets...Onslaught.

"There's my favorite clown!" Icicle Junior said with a grin on his face.

"Sup my peeps," she greeted him before back-flipping off the ladder and onto her feet. "This old man and those stupid bozos sent me to capture a couple of mini "Justice League" sidekicks. Here's the catch in Savage's quote..."If Gaia doesn't bring me that information by New Year's Day, she'll be "punished" by her daddy dearest...Deathstroke." What a load of bullshit."

Onslaught begun chuckling in amusement by Punchline's blunt statement about Gaia, Terra's actual identity and villain alias. The clown villainess took them to the warehouse, where they found an armored tech aircraft that Punchline stolen and upgraded with weapons. The clown countess opens the door and tosses a rocket missile launcher that was combined with a homemade bazooka cannon to Devastation.

"That's my favorite toy there Deva, it can blow up a whole bank and gives a light show of pain on those stupid cops. It got a missile filled with the toughest stuff I can get from Ace Chemicals, one big blow and BAM! Those goodie two-shoes will be laughing and screaming to their deaths." Punchline said.

"Nice," the Daimone commented with an evil smirk.

"Who wants to see what this baby can do?" Punchline suggested with a wicked smile.

Onslaught smirked in return and were pumped up to see the clown countess cause some crimes. They got into Punchline's aircraft and she started it with one click of a button. The abandoned warehouse's doors slid open and she took off through them.

The villains wooed in excitement while Punchline flew them in the skies and the reign of terror was about to begin now. Icicle Junior stood up from his seat and whispered an idea that made the clown countess smirk. Punchline presses the blue button and it drops a giant metal can of Punchline spray into Arkham City.

"That's for ditching me to the cops you cocksuckers!" It exploded in seconds and several thugs begun laughing hard while screaming in terror.

Onslaught laughed as the thugs passed out cold and hard like stones. Punchline flew them to the nearest bank in Gotham City and tossed them some gas masks. The clown countess nods for Devastation to fire the missile, the Daimone fires it and it went off in seconds when it drops to the floor.

"Damn it! These jackasses are here to ruin shit! Let these bitches feel the motherfucking taste of payback!" Punchline said after dropping another cherry bomb and it got all the cops in a matter of minutes.

All fifteen villains minus Punchline were sent down by ladders right before the bomb exploded and it got members of several police squads. Many innocents were screaming in terror and laughing hard in pain. Onslaught watched as every citizen got knocked out and lose consciousness by Punchline's newest invention.

"Gaia would absolutely love you Punchline, they'll get along well." Tommy Terror commented.

"Agree big brother," his younger sister Tuppence Terror replied.

After Punchline told Joker that she put the world on blast with her spray on the communicator, the Clown King was proud of his hit-woman and was laughing at how she built cherry bombs with her perfume spray in it. The clown countess got some clear mist popped into her mouth in dissolving capsules and kept her gas mask off except for her face paint. Once she heard her targets come back with all of the loot, Punchline caught a bright red aircraft and knew the Bio-Ship was landing on the next rooftop.

"Seriously," the clown countess muttered under her breath before landing her ship and flipping down on the sidewalk with swiftness.

"Hey sidekicks, meet our newest member Punchline." Gizmo introduced the clown countess, watching her land gracefully and standing on her two heeled boots.

The Team sees an unfamiliar member of the villains and realized that this was Joker's very first sidekick Punchline. She was looking gothic, corrupted, psychopathic, and evil with laughter and jokes. When Punchline licks her plump lips that was coated with matte black lipstick, Wonder Girl could see the metal piercings of Snake Eyes on her bottom lip and the Venom on her blue raspberry-flavored tongue.

"Is that y'all dweebs been dealing with this whole time? A couple of obnoxious sidekicks hiding behind the cowardly shadows of their stupid mentors?" Superboy wasn't pleased with Punchline's words and the rest was offended by the rebellious clown villainess.

"Sadly," the super-intelligent genius inventor answered.

"How boring, though...I did like that gray little rodent you guys all know about. Well...I think this will spark something quite...pleasing." Punchline said, holding the Lucky Girl's customized domino mask, and the sidekicks froze to see human blood and burn marks on it.

Robin recognized it and caught the small little splashes of fresh blood on the domino mask. The Boy Wonder was now shaking with shock and anger. Punchline's done the most shocking and unthinkable thing that every villain wishes to do.

"What did you do to Mouse, you heartless monster?!" Punchline chuckled darkly while smirking at the livid sidekicks, winking at the Boy Wonder with a seductive look.

"Punchy here did the most amazing thing villains always wanted, the death of that pesky little rodent...by playing Russian Roulette with the staff members at Zephyr...all by herself." Blackfire said.

'No, it can't be true...' the Boy Wonder thought with fear and rage.

"Her death in my hands...earned me this spot in this laugh pack, that poor little squeaker was crying and begging for y'all...her stupid little friends to come rescue her from me, aw...those fucking selfish sobs got on my damn nerves." Punchline said, hissing angrily when she mentioned the tears and cries "Mouse" let out for the Young Justice Team.

Memories of Mouse being with each member except for Terra flashed through their minds by a spell from Punchline (Mouse), her helping them with many things and reassuring everybody that she will heal their pain away. The sibling-like bonds they formed and the hugs she gave them before she left for Anodyne. Robin was still shaking in rage while Punchline gave him a little wink and lick her lips again.

"Here's how I killed her...I slit her pretty throat wide open, cut her pink tongue out of her tiny mouth into small pieces, made her choke on her own blood and broke all of her bones. I would've made her my plaything and break her like a little doll, but her suffering a slow and painful death got me satisfied enough until I played my game. Russian Roulette, those last bullets ended her life...forever!" Punchline told the Young Justice Team, earning chuckles from Onslaught as she twirls her butterfly switchblades and props her stiletto guns on the heels of her black thigh-high boots.

'She's so dead,' the demigoddess thought while clutching her sword and lasso with anger.

"That little girl was so cute bleeding, so...I kissed her and she tasted better after she died...as a selfish heroine...protecting y'all dumbass idiots from me. As for her fucking body," Robin's glare hardened with anger as he tries to not snap and attack Punchline with a murderous intention. "I took her corpse, stab that tiny bitch multiple times...and I burned it down to her grave till she was nothing but some cinder fucking ashes to my boss's...cigar...tray."

Robin immediately charged for Punchline with an enraged growl, who quickly dodged and begun deflecting the Boy Wonder's merciless hits as she cackles at his vampiric red eyes. The rest followed their friend's lead and went after different people. The clown countess led Robin up onto the rooftops and ran away while the Boy Wonder rushed after her.

"COME BACK HERE YOU EVIL BITCH!!" Robin yelled angrily.

"Aw, is the poor little vampire mad?" Punchline taunted him, getting his anger pumping with his adrenaline. "Don't worry you leech, your precious rodent loved you so much that I gave that sweet little brat her first kiss."

Their rooftop fight continued while their own teammates fought each other and try to win the fight. The Boy Wonder was jabbed in his Adam's apple hard and got punched in the gut. He gasps and coughs for air while Punchline knelt down to his level.

"Fly away little bat," the clown countess whispered evilly into Robin's ears and did an air-themed spell. "Fly away."

Robin was suddenly hit into the night sky and Punchline hit a vital point with her two fingers, sending the Boy Wonder into Superboy who caught him right on time. The Son of Steel caught a pair of Kryptonite daggers in the female clown's hands and kneeled down with a weakened grunt when she got much closer to him. Punchline smirked with a sinister intent and shot some tranquilizer darts at each sidekicks.

"Ack!" Robin groaned in pain as Punchline grabs his face, he growls weakly and went wide-eyed when she kisses him dead on his lips.

The clown countess put some tongue within their forced kiss and pulls away with a smirk. Robin gasps for breath and coughs as his teammates were horrified when Punchline begun violating him with her mouth. The fifteen sidekicks passed out while Terra stood up and laughs with the clown countess.

"Nice one Punchline, I see why the gang loves how heartless and corrupting you can be." Gaia commented.

"Doesn't matter what the fuck I can do, get them in Cadmus, I got some new toys to break and dismantle for my dollhouse. You guys stay on watch and wait for your rides back to the Light. Is that clear?" Onslaught nodded before strapping each unconscious hero tight and hard into the truck Punchline sent with her in an abandoned alleyway. "This is what November is really all about...their murders and your unfaithfulness Gaia, time to reveal the truth and why you did it all...thanks to your help, I finally got payback on that useless coward. We got more time to celebrate till our reign of chaos and torture begins at midnight sharp."

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The Young Justice Team wakes up restrained and held captive within Cadmus Laboratories as new projects. They instantly sees Punchline sitting in front of them with Onslaught sitting beside her, caressing Mouse's broken replica mask and smiling evilly at it with madness. Robin struggles to get free for some vengeance, but was electrocuted when the clown rebel presses a red button on her remote controller.

"ROBIN!" The Boy Wonder stops struggling and glares straight at a smirking Punchline.

"Happy Thanksgiving kiddos, how's your little nap time?" Punchline mocked them, laughing hard when they gave her hardened glares. "Keep doing that, it won't bring that twerp back...oh wait, she's already dead!"

Punchline cracks up hard and sighs happily afterwards while wiping a fake tear from her left eye. She fiddles with her customized daggers around her black lab cloak and crosses her legs together while sharpening her fingernails. Beast Boy tried to transform into animals, but he sees brand new inhibitor collars and power neutralizers on him along with his loved ones.

"YOU MONSTER, WHERE'S TERRA?!!" Beast Boy yelled at Punchline, who smirks happily and gave him a cocky look.

She coldly presses the lime button and Beast Boy screams in pain. Punchline stops pressing it and puts the remote controller back in her front pocket, zipping it up and crossing her arms to her ample chest. She gave him a fake pout and it slowly shifts into a crazed look when she tilts her head a bit.

"Oh...you mean your little girlfriend," she replied to him with a sinister look. "Well...you little hemoglobin, wanna hear a bedtime story before I drained all of your blood out with this machine and make some clones out of it for the Light?"

The others were confused and concerned for themselves getting cloned by the clown countess. Raven and Zatanna tried their magic to break their loved ones free, but they saw that there was magic cuffs on their wrists and ankles. The rest saw all of their weapons hanging on the shelf that's labeled as Punchline's Dollhouse.

"WHY DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH TERRA?!!" Punchline smacked her plump lips before going close to Raven's chamber with darkened eyes and a blank look on her face.

"You should remember something about that tiny little rodent pointing out other clues to who's the real mole was before she died...Trigon's selfless little girl," the Azarathian Cambion was shocked and frightened cause Punchline brought up her horrid father. "Think about it, Mouse broke the whole mole case, which gave me the opportunity to kill her before it's all too late...who was the last person to arrive back in your base? Who tried to get inside her room and be put under her designation number? Huh?"

Amalgam and Rocket froze when they both realize what Mouse warned them about having new members...risks of having a spy for the Light in their base. Kid Flash mouthed out to Artemis that it was truly Terra who tricked them and made Mouse suffer her tragic death in the hands of Punchline. Lumus grew mad with Beast Boy until she presses the gray and lime buttons, stopping only to let them breathe for her torture games.

"Not every villain lies you idiots, Terra's the main reason why your Lucky Girl's now dead and long gone." Terra was the mole this whole time, Raven begun raging through the mind link and Miss Martian cuts her off from it.

All of her remaining teammates could see the female cambion about to snap and beat up Punchline for killing her big sister figure Mouse. Zatanna could feel her mother Unia's powers corrupting her due to the rage from Punchline's taunts and mockery on them. Wonder Girl gave both magic users warning glares, which made them snap out of their raging fits and calmed down.

"Here's more news though, Mouse's soul is lost inside the Lazarus Pits and being used for a new sacrifice. After the old man brings her back from the dead, they'll hand her off to the Dagon and give him a host. The most powerful being in the universe beyond every single dimension...an Anodite." Amalgam gulped nervously when he heard the name Dagon and whispered no with fear.

"Do you realize you're putting all of us including yourself in danger?!" Punchline shrugged with a blank look at Zatanna's exclamation.

"So? Nobody's stopping me," the Boy Wonder gave the female clown widened eyes and raised eyebrows. "If I was them, I would've been like..."Let's take the female Martian, she got enough power to kill!", and do that suggestion instead!"

Miss Martian gave the clown countess a petrified expression and continuously shakes her head no while Superboy growls angrily at Punchline, not wanting his Martian girlfriend becoming a sacrifice that could end the world. The female clown rolled her green eyes at the Son of Steel and opens the door to reveal the mole in her apprentice suit. Beast Boy growls angrily at his ex crush and she smirks evilly at him in response.

"Okay the rest of you savages, y'all deserve to bask in the glory of what these oldies couldn't do in one night and get your break...take as much as you want. I don't care for the money, I just love making heroes suffer and killing them after they are weak. Christmas is in a month, my present to y'all is their deaths...and their weapons as souvenirs." Punchline told them, earning appreciative looks from Onslaught and they left the room.

Gaia stood beside Punchline, handing her the flash drives of information and locations of each superhero. The clown countess nodded down at the female Stratan and pats her back in respect. Punchline begun using her hacking skills to send the files and information over to the Bat-Cave instead, watching Gaia point at Beast Boy with a disgusted look on her face.

"I wanna smack that damn smirk right off your face you traitor," the female archer scoffed at Gaia, speaking in a cold and blunt tone.

"Sorry Artemis, but it's already too late...you and the rest of these failures here will lose everything while I get the credit I de-" Gaia was cut off by Punchline who kicked her hard across her face, knocking her out and tying her up.

Punchline shushed the Young Justice Team as her eyes glowed pink and mana wrapped around the doors, locking them shut with a grip of an immortal. She takes a deep breath and uses her powers to close the doors till they're impossibly indestructible. The sidekicks were confused as Punchline mutters a few curse words and mumbles a noise cancelation spell in Latin.

"YOU -" Punchline gestured them to not talk by holding the remote controller, which made them silent and watched the clown countess puts an unconscious Gaia down on her rolling chair.

"Before you fools say anything, I'm maybe that evil but not enough to kill innocents...your best friend's still alive somewhere." The Boy Wonder was confused and scared for a moment cause Punchline just brutally hit Gaia hard with a knockout superkick.

"No, she's not! You're lying you crazy chick! You killed her cold-blooded!" Kid Flash yelled in denial.

Punchline clicks her tongue in annoyance while rolling her eyes at the yellow teenage speedster, she slowly takes off the sacred amulet her grandma gave her for this mission and the disguise comes right off of her body. The Young Justice Team froze to see Mouse, who's now known as Catgirl for the first time with new looks, such as the bright green cat eyes, and the platinum white wig covering her natural ginger orange hair. The Lucky Girl then pressed the clear button on the remote controller and let all fifteen sidekicks go.

"HOW?!! THE LEAGUE TOLD US YOU DIED WHEN YOU CAME BACK HOME!!" Lumus asked in shock, hugging his best friend tight.

"Three words Lumi...made of magic," the Lucky Girl answered as she takes off the restraints on each hero. "I told them that I'm secretly going undercover as Punchline to get tons of important information and steal a lot of files from the Light. It worked out very well, but we're still dealing with the mole problem until Gaia have confessed everything when I got security cameras and trackers on me from Batman during my personal mission. She can't escape from the truth now and so forth. I just needed an illusion that'll make me look dead and have somebody else disguised as Punchline in order to make it true. Knowing all of you will complicate things for me, the reason why I brought Onslaught here to Cadmus for this purpose...this is where the Team all started and where Onslaught will be defeated. Gaia nor her comrades can't hear us speak, but I got a bone to pick with somebody else...she better know that Boy Wonder has always been mine first and never will be hers. Isn't that right pretty boy~?"

Robin was about to say something, but was blushing hard as he realizes that Catgirl was the one who kissed him hard and gave him his first kiss. Kid Flash snickers at the reddened cheeks on Robin's face, giving him a high-five while ruffling his hair and hugging Catgirl. The Lucky Girl accepts the hug and pulls away before she snaps her fingers, causing the door to the "dollhouse" shelf to open.

"You're such an evil genius Cat, no wonder Gaia hates you so much." Catgirl nodded at Artemis's statement in agreement before grabbing something from her bag and turning it on. "YOU WOULDN'T DARE!!"

The half-Anodite held Gaia down and pinned her on her stomach. As soon as Superboy hears the loud buzzing sounds of an electric device, he snaps his head and smiles mischievously when Catgirl shaves all of Gaia's golden blonde hair off. The Lucky Girl stood back up and held up all the natural strands of blond hair in one gloved hand, dropping them like snow onto Gaia's face on purpose.

"Never mess with my loved ones Gaia, this is what happens if you do!" Catgirl whispered at her, shaving off her eyebrows and turning off her electric razor-sharp clippers.

Raven begun laughing hard, which made the rest of the Team shocked cause she never laughs and smiles. Beast Boy hugs Catgirl and she kisses her little brother figure on his forehead. He smiled at the sibling love she gave him and turned into a puppy, licking her cheeks.

"Love you too Beastie," the Lucky Girl whispered to Beast Boy's ear before putting him down and opening a portal.

Catgirl erases Gaia's memories about her loved ones and allies before replacing them with ones she can only keep. Miss Martian and Superboy sees the proof that the Lucky Girl, every single fake moment Gaia made with everyone from the Team. Catgirl absorbs everything and trades it for her version of memories that contains hatred.

"That's for my stuff," she mouthed out angrily. "And you'll never see the lights of day the same way ever again."

Catgirl tosses Gaia through the portal and closes it shut immediately. Aqualad gave the Lucky Girl a disapproving look as she cancels the spell and their enemies can finally hear again. The female white-haired vigilante points at the door and nods at her leader.

"I don't approve you doing things like that Catgirl," she gave her leader a raised eyebrow and smiles when Wonder Girl gives Aqualad the same deadpan look he got from the tomboyish demi-goddess one time for his overprotective behavior on her. "But Gaia deserves it from you as a clear message to our enemies."

Catgirl immediately rolled her green eyes with an amused look and let Superboy hold her close to Miss Martian. The two telepaths smiled at each other with joy, though the female Martian let her back in the mind link and the Lucky Girl went livid after Kid Flash mentioned her former height again. Catgirl smacks him in the back of his head with her hand and he yelps in pain, rubbing it from the firm impact as Artemis and Robin laughs at him.

'Who wants to beat up some bad guys and go back home?' Catgirl asked them, grabbing her whip and katana sword. 'Zee, Rae, time for a magic trick.'

Raven and Zatanna stood side by side with Catgirl. They held her hand in theirs and their eyes begun glowing. Darkness, light, and ethereality begun circling around them as the Trinity of Magic begun chanting their spells.

"Aperi Lanua!" The three circles of magic energy combined as one to form twilight tendrils and it opened the doors wide. "Dimitte Sigillum!"

The seal breaks and the three magic users were free. Catgirl saw her pink mana turning back to pure magic energy, which made her smile with relief and amazement. The Lucky Girl begins levitating from the floor and flying towards Nova, going after the youngest Star Sapphire from the Violet Lantern Corps.

The two girls begun engaging in fists and blasting energy rays at each other. Nova throws an enhanced fist made from violet lantern power, but Catgirl absorbs it and teleports behind her. When the blond-haired Star Sapphire turns to face her, the Lucky Girl lets out a sonic scream and it sent her feet away from her for Starfire to kick her across the floor into her older twin sister Blackfire.

Amalgam does a step-up Enziguri on Mammoth and Superboy punches the younger twin before they used their super strength on him together in unison. The two metahumans nodded with smirks and ducked on time for Holocaust to get hit instead. Amalgam electrocuted the male Hellspawn while kneeling down and absorbing the metal on the floor.

"Hey you over-sized oven, try this!" Amalgam yelled out before swinging his mallet-shifted hand into his face. "And that's for burning my gal!"

Catgirl senses the JLA, so she lets them enter her portal and her fifteen friends froze when they caught their mentors appearing. Onslaught were shot with tranquilizer darts from Catgirl before losing consciousness and she stood up in victory. The Justice League handcuffed all sixteen villains and took them to the main exit, silently thanking Catgirl for cracking the case.

"It's not over Catgirl, wait till I-" the Lucky Girl's mouth went open and her jaw dropped in shock when Raven punched Gaia right across her face, knocking her out cold.

"You made so proud Raven," the cambion nodded with a soft smile, running back to Beast Boy's arms and hugging him.

The green changeling smiles while blushing and hugging her back in joy. Catgirl went to them and joined the group hug with rest behind her, doing the same thing to two youngest members of the Team. The sixteen heroes pulled away and headed outside to see the Bio-Ship waiting for them.

"So Robin, are you going to tell Batman about your girlfriend~?" The Boy Wonder blushed and told Kid Flash to shut up, but was suddenly being held upside down by a pink mana tendril. "Hahaha!! Got him good Cat!!"

The rest of the Team laughed with the speedster as Catgirl sat criss-crossed on her pink mana platform and was smiling at him with a loving look on her face. She kisses the Boy Wonder softly on his lips and felt Robin smile from her affection on him. The Lucky Girl lets him down and was lifted up in his arms, earning a flustered look on her face.

"Take us home Boy Wonder," he grinned and unleash his vampiric dragon wings to guide them away as a night creature.

"Y'all heading home already?" Artemis asked them, smirking as Robin held Catgirl bridal style.

"Yep, he needs me as much as I need him gal. See you guys in the morning...love y'all!" The Boy Wonder begun flying away with a proud look and taking his Lucky Girl with him.

Robin cackles while carrying and flyinh away to the Bat-Cave with his new lover in his arms. Catgirl held onto him and lay her head on his chest. She kissed where his heart was and the two vigilantes headed to the Bat-Cave in one piece.

"Let's head back to the mountain, Cat did pointed out she's been having full access there since she got there." The rest nodded before getting on the Bio-Ship.

"Me too Princess," the demigoddess suddenly gives Kid Flash a set of hardened eyes. "Me too."

Wonder Girl instantly snapped and sent Kid Flash flying through the starry night sky by one low blow kick. The rest of the guys in the ship and their girlfriends watched in shock as the speedster was screaming in terror throughout his launch. Aqualad pulls his lover close while she glares at the others in warning and they sat down on their spots.

During their nightly stroll around Gotham, the new young couple heard screaming and saw Kid Flash flying towards them. Catgirl's round pupils in her green eyes turned into feline slits and she swung her whip at a different direction. Robin watched his new girlfriend maneuver the teenage speedster into the skies again and open a portal back to the Bio-Ship.

"Was that Tavia's doing?" Robin asked her, who nod her head yes to confirm and grew scared.

"Kaldur's the only person who can Tavia by her royal title Princess, Wally pushed that rank way too far." Catgirl answered, watching Kid Flash slid down the floor of the Bio-Ship and crashing into the front...face first. "At least, he's back in the ship. We should continue heading back to the Cave..."

The two begun rushing back through Gotham City and going through stealth mode while smiling at the moonlit sky that glowed bright with the stars. The Boy Wonder spun the Lucky Girl around and twirled her around as she giggles gleefully. Robin and Catgirl shared one last kiss before dropping down into Wayne Enterprises by a secret entrance...what a good night for love.

[subbyfoxelf]

[comic & movie review] teen titans: the judas contract

“ooh, i’m gonna sign up for this thing called ‘tweeter.’ you put up what you’re thinking like, ‘i love pizza,’ or ‘i’m having pizza now,’ or even ‘pizza is awesome!’”

another one where i saw the movie before i read the comic. when i finally read the comic it ended up feeling like a more bare-bones version of the movie with cornier dialogue.

it was cool to see dick’s debut as nightwing, but that was actually kinda infuriatingly- written? like, he decides he needs to sort out his whole superhero identity shit before he can go rescue his friends who are in mortal danger? just… what the heck, dick???

i liked the movie version a lot better, honestly. mostly down to there being a lot more “there” there when it comes to characterization. the plot also feels quite a bit more coherent while still hitting a lot of the same landmarks.

i also liked the team composition a lot more in the movie, which is basically just a continuation of the team and relationships from justice league vs. teen titans. having damian there in particular really added a lot.

there’s also just… a lot in terra’s characterization that i didn’t like in the comic, especially towards the end. although it has its issues (which we’ll come back to shortly), having the general idea be that slade was grooming her makes a lot more sense than going out of your way to say that she was evil the whole time and deserves no sympathy.

just… people can do bad things and still be victims, guys. you don’t need to be an angel to deserve the safety of not being preyed upon by gross older men.

i really could’ve done without the entire “pressure makes diamonds” bullshit in the movie, though. you are a movie that LITERALLY shows someone having ptsd flashbacks and having everyone else immediately get it because THEY’VE had ptsd flashbacks.

trauma doesn’t make people great. trauma reveals the greatness that was already there, and which would have flourished in a nurturing, loving environment. and there are plenty of people who ARE destroyed by trauma, and that doesn’t mean they were weak or not special enough or whatever the fuck. it’s all circumstance. and there’s nothing good about it.

i get that it’s tempting to see a silver lining in things that suck, but this kind of thinking can EASILY slide into abuse apologism, “i just wanted you to be the best you could be” etc and i think it’s really important to challenge it whenever it appears.

showing slade to be a grooming piece of shit is not necessarily automatically the wrong thing to do, but like a lot of these movies that get into edgier territory the movie just didn’t punish him enough if that’s where they were gonna go. his bullshit quip about there “not being a lot of grey” in terra’s betrayal of the titans applies pretty directly to him. grooming is a kind of evil you just fucking don’t come back from. taking someone vulnerable and knowingly manipulating and victimizing them... when you’re willing to do that kind of shit, you are the fucking worst kind of evil, and you need to be unambiguously ended, not buried in rubble and shuffled offscreen so you can probably come back in a few movies.

having terra kill herself after all that is just the icing on this bad idea cake. i fucking hate all of this.

... so here’s why i like the movie anyway.

nightwing and robin’s relationship has fucking ruled in all of these movies, but this movie takes it to a new level. robin congratulating nightwing on moving in with starfire in a stiff, overly formal way was just so godsdamned precious. he’s trying so hard, he’s such a good boy! at this point i think i’m just the president of the damian wayne fanclub, at least in these movies.

speaking of damian being the best, him bratting at slade absolutely ruled.

speaking of bratting, the movie basically confirmed multiple times that nightwing is a bottom, and especially in the context of his relationship with starfire. like, she got him all flustered several times, and to top it all off at one point she literally tackled him onto a couch and called him a brat. dick grayson continues to be the most intensely relatable character for me.

i know she was basically the centerpiece of the last movie but the movie version didn’t have nearly enough raven for my tastes? it did somewhat make up for that by having her deliver the final blow to blood, but yeah. at least there was plenty of beast boy and blue beetle. they’re such good boys!

and, yeah, the fight scenes mostly ruled, especially dick versus slade. which was lifted more or less directly from the comic in terms of scenario, but expanded upon and executed so well it was honestly one of the best fights of the entire movie series.

so like... as much as there are a few big picture things to complain about, i enjoyed probably 90% of the movie’s runtime? it’s just that the things i didn’t like were extremely deep tissue so it’s kind of always a little hard to figure out what to do with that.

comic: c-rank

movie: b-rank

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

The New Teen Titans Part 2 The Judas Contract

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HVczsln by KatScythe THIS IS WHAT 'TITANS' SHOULD HAVE BEEN A new, adult revamp of the original 2003 Teen Titans cartoon, with bits and pieces from all the different media versions of the Teen Titans out there. Filled with blood and gore and foul-mouthedness, and real consequences to five superpowered idiot teenagers running around blowing stuff up and causing general mayhem. THE STORY CONTINUES… Dick Grayson—Robin, the Boy-Wonder—is finally out from Batman's shadow, and finds himself the newly minted leader of his own fledgling team: Victor Stone, cybernetically enhanced tech-genius; Koriand'r of Tamaran, alien Princess with explosive fire power; Garfield Logan, animal-shapeshifting goofball; and Raven, dark telekinetic with a mysterious past. Fresh off their victory over the aliens that attacked their city, the five young heroes begin their training, learning about their powers, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to work and fight and live together as a team. Then, a new, untrained meta appears, in desperate need of their help. But as the unexpected newcomer joins the group, they start to wonder if there may be more to Terra than meets the eye… updates every Friday-ish... Words: 4901, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Series: Part 2 of The *New* Teen Titans Fandoms: Teen Titans - All Media Types, Teen Titans (Animated Series), Titans (TV 2018), Teen Titans (Comics), New Teen Titans, DCU, DCU (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: F/M Characters: Raven (Teen Titans), Dick Grayson, Robin (DCU), Koriand'r (DCU), Starfire (Teen Titans), Garfield Logan, Beastboy (Teen Titans), Victor Stone, Cyborg (Teen Titans), Bruce Wayne, Batman (DCU), Nightwing (DCU), Justice League (DCU), Batfamily Members, Terra (Teen Titans), Slade Wilson, Slade (Teen Titans) Relationships: Dick Grayson & Koriand'r & Garfield Logan & Raven & Victor Stone, Robin & Starfire & BeastBoy & Raven & Cyborg, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Garfield Logan/Raven, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r Additional Tags: TITANS GO!, BOOYAH!, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AU, DC threw canon in the garbage so I'm going dumpster diving, if Titans had been done right, i fixed it!, Teen Titans as Family, Raven-centric (Teen Titans), Empath Raven (Teen Titans), Demon Raven (Teen Titans), she's kind of an eldritch horror, BAMF Raven (Teen Titans), BAMF Dick Grayson, BAMF Beastboy (Teen Titans), BAMF Starfire (Teen Titans), BAMF Cyborg (Teen Titans), how are those not recognized tags!?!?, they're all badasses and they deserve to be put in the tags, and dorks, they're all adorable dorks, Dick Grayson is mad sexy and it's giving me a complex, stop it, Romani Dick Grayson, these guys being domestic gives me life, and Dick Grayson's horrible puns, and the dick jokes...those too, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Bruce Wayne is Trying, at least he's a better parent than Steve Dayton, and everyone on Azarath, there's definite child abuse, they are definitely not the good guys in this story, RobStar, bbrae – Freeform, idiots to lovers, Slow Burn, and i mean VERY slow burn, but they're just SO STUPID, I mean I know I made them but yikes, get it together guys read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HVczsln

[plotbunny-bundle]

skipped ahead in Young Justice cause I didn’t like the Episode I was on.

Things I like. The action.  Getting to hear Black Canary and Zatanna in action. I wish I had subtitles so I could read what she was doing. And Canary’s cry sound so cool and like it rings.

I liked how they characters gave up their secrets to the team. That was a good sequences. I liked that characters have lives. In Downtime we see every in their homes. Wally and Robin go to school. Artemis lives in Gotham with her mom.

What I didn’t like: For some reason every character had an assigned heterosexual romance to be in.  Why was that necessary? I don’t really like Robin and Zatanna. She’s Bruce’s age now in the comics and Dick is like 13.  She was in the Justice league when he was Robin in the 80s. But they did drop her and her dad a generation down.  Yeah I don’t like it.

This is one this Teen Titans did better. There were two couple. One worked out, one didn’t. Starfire and Robin, and Terra and Beast boy.  Whatever was with Raven and Beast Boy went over my aro ace head and that’s how I like it.

Was amused when I checked out season 2 and all the couples had broken up.

Checked out Season 2. It was off putting to me. The time skip and sudden expansion of the cast was jarring. I was very excited to see Cassie-Wonder Girl but it felt like a lot of cameos. Something that annoys me with Disney’s stuff.

I feel like you need DC knowledge to understand this show. This wasn’t the case for Teen Titans. Idk if that’s for good or bad.

The new designs for the characters are great. They show something changed and the characters are still recognizable.

I’m amused by how tall Robin/Nightwing got. That kid went from being the shortest on the team to the tallest. he grew like 2 feet in 5 years. RIP his balance. I wonder if there’s any fanart of Robin outgrowing his friends

I think it will take some work to get me into season 2. I’ll finish up 1 and hope it makes me want more.

[leinterested]

Highlights from Grandon DC Interview

Before we get into the new season, I’d love to rewind for a second and address the ending of Young Justice: Outsiders. For a little while, it looked like Tara Markov would betray her teammates like her comic book counterpart did, but you pulled a surprise swerve during the season finale. Can you talk about plotting that story?

Greg: We felt that the Judas Contract had been done authentically multiple times in animation, and we wanted to provide a twist that would suit our version of the character and highlight the abuse Tara Markov had suffered, while showing the possibility of Terra’s redemption instead of her death.

Brandon: We hoped Tara’s traditional story that fans know and expect would serve as a misdirect for the ironic, be-careful-what-you-wish-for ending to Brion’s story in season three. In effect, we were going for a double twist ending that would cap our season-wide storyline about meta-kids caught in the crossfire of Earth’s genetic arms race.

This season has a new opening theme sequence that the fans absolutely love. Can you walk us through how you put it together?

Greg: There was a desire to get back to our core characters, the season one team, in essence. So, we asked our Model Supervisor, Dou Hong, to draw our leads while our Art Director of Motion Graphics, Matt Girardi, and his team put together some slick visuals to accompany Dou’s art.

Brandon: Back in season one, we asked our composers, the Dynamic Music Partners, to score the theme with synth elements to reflect our young heroes. Symphonic instruments were reserved for older heroes in the Justice League. So, music was used to reflect generational differences. But our young heroes have aged and by season four we wanted the music to reflect that. So, you’ll notice the original synth music is still there, but now accompanied with symphonic instruments. The result is powerful!

one of the biggest differences between Earth-16 and more traditional takes on the DC Universe is the very present and active Martian society. What was behind that decision?

Greg: Way back when, while developing the first season, we decided that Krypton should be unique in its destruction. Having every alien come from a dead world brought us nothing new. But having M’arzz be a living, thriving—if troubled—society was bound to bring us stories.

Brandon: If that society was extinct there would be far less dramatic weight hanging over M’gann. And we needed that weight to craft a truly unique coming-of-age story for her.

Last season, you explored Gar's mental health with the episode "Nightmare Monkeys," and this season revisited the theme during the episode "Volatile." Can you talk about dealing with mental health in a superhero show, and why Gar was the character you chose to tackle that topic?

Greg: I was on a convention panel once, and an Iraqi vet talked about his post-traumatic stress and wished that his favorite shows dealt with this topic more. I felt like a cloud was lifting. Of course, Young Justice should deal with these issues. And given his history, Beast Boy seemed like the character to focus on.

Brandon: We never wanted Young Justice to feel like a cartoon where bad things happen, but problems are solved in thirty minutes and forgotten by the next episode. High stakes superhero lifestyles must have an impact on mental health at some point. So, we wrote therapy scenes into our series as early as season one in order to add realistic consequences to dramatic events. But again, writing is a learning process and we eventually realized we needed help from professionals to make sure we depicted mental health issues properly. Dr. Janina Scarlett has been huge source of guidance and inspiration on that front.

Young Justice has always been great at Easter eggs. Seemingly random background characters turn out to be obscure DC players like Bash Bashford. Are there any hidden gems during these first four episodes that fans have missed?

Greg: Every named Martian is a character from the comics—with an Earth-16 twist. Plus, you know, we name dropped Detective Chimp.

Brandon: You never know who will pop up in the show. Or in the credits. Or AFTER the credits. Source https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2021/11/01/sixteen-questions-with-the-young-justice-showrunners

[docgold13]

365 DC Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

Suplemental - Villains Who Are Sometimes Heroes  

Often times, the best villains are those who do not necessarily seem themselves as such.  They are the heroes of their own stories and believe their villainous actions are in the service of some form of a greater good.  As such, there are numerous instances in which a villain will come to act in the role of hero or antihero, where the bad guy is actually the good guy, or a former nemesis becomes a sudden ally.  Following the jump are some of my favorite villains who frequently end up playing a heroic role…

There can be no doubt that both Deathstroke and Bane are bad to the bone. Yet each have acting in the role of antihero more times than can easily counted. 

Poison Ivy is less villainess than ecological warrior.  Her actions may be evil in the minds of many, but for her she is merely defending the wellbeing of plant life and attempting to stave off mankind’s thoughtless efforts to make the planet inhospitable to both flora and fauna alike.

The Flash’s Rogues, especially Captain Cold, HeatWave, The Pied Piper and The Trickster are most certainly cads… yet they all abide by their own particular code of honor and conduct.  As such, they have been many a time where these rogues have fought along side heroes as opposed to against them.

The Shade has been one of the Justice Society’s most formidable of adversaries.  And yet it was later revealed that he isn’t that bad a guy and it was the malignant possession of the devious Culp who was responsible for most of his villainous deeds.  

Both The Star Sapphire and Goldface each began as villains but ended up heroes.  

Knockout and Scandal are wonderful and I’ll hear no bad words about them.  

Brainwave Junior‘s turn as a villain was initially attributed to his difficulties with mental illness, but it was later revealed to be the machinations of the evil Mr. Mind.  Once the little creep was expelled, Brainwave Jr. became good again. whew!

The second Tattooed Man started off a villain but later became a hero, only to be killed in Heroes in Crisis (hopefully he’ll get better like most of the victims of Sanctuary).  As for Harlequin, she only acted as a villain to get the attention of her crush, Green Lantern (Alan Scott)… boy was she barking up the wrong tree.

Bizarro is not necessarily bad, rather he’s naive and easily manipulated and the majority of his evil acts have been the result of coercion by way of more purely evil villains.  And under the right direction, Bizarro can very much be a force for good, such as the time he served as a hero among The Red Hood’s band of Outlaws.  

Anarky is a political extremist and Thorne suffers from some sort of psychological malady.  Sometimes their on the right side of a conflict, sometimes on the wrong.  Are they bad guys… whose to say?

This guy… where do I even start?  Lex Luther certainly does not see himself as a villain; he’s out to save the world.  And there have been many a time where he has achieved exactly that.  He could have been hero on par with the greatest in the DC Universe… if only he hadn’t stolen all of those pies!

Plastique began as a terrorist and villain yet spent a brief time as a hero, a result of her romance with Captain Atom.  Alas the affair between the two proved to be short live, and so time did Plastique’s time as a hero.  As he Deadshot, he’s a stone-cold killer, yet his time with The Suicide Squad and Secret Six has hoisted him into the role of antihero… a role that proved a surprisingly good fit for the deadly marksman.

Cheshire is a deadly assassin who has proven formidable nemesis of The Teen Titans.  When he daughter’s wellbeing is on the line, however, the killer is quick to aide her one time rivals.  

Painkiller started off as a villain yet has recently turned to the role of antihero; mostly a result of the character’s involvement in the Black Lightning television series.  As for Manchester Black, I’m never going to be convince to trust this creepy peet… yet Superman has decided to do just that, recruiting the cad into his new team The Elite.

Both Fataly and Bleez have very good reasons to be as angry and vengeful as they are.  And though both have battled the Green Lanterns on multiple occasions, they have also assisted the corps in joining forces against common enemies.  

Thomas Blake made for a rather lousy super villain during his early years as Catman.  After a much-needed Gail Simone make-over, however, he became a truly terrific antihero.  Plus, anyone who likes cats as much as he does can’t be all that bad, right?

Although technically villains, I wouldn’t classify Jenette nor Black Alice as necessarily bad…  They both just have a different way of looking at the matter of morality.

Don’t mess with Lady Shiva… let’s just leave it at that.

Polymath’s tenure as a villain was merely a result of her desperation to save her father.  Once the Wonder Twins helped her do just that, she resigned from her villainous ways.  Shado‘s deal is a bit more complicated.  The devious archer has proven a formidable adversary to Green Arrow, but there has also been many a time where the two have fought side by side.  

So Dex-Starr is a rage-filled murder machine possessing awesome power.  Yet that is pretty much the case for all house cats, so I don’t see what the big deal is…

Both Killer Frost and Magenta fell into the antiquated trope of powerful women becoming evil due to some sort of hysteria.  Sure they’ve been bad guys plenty of times, but they have each also acted as heroes as well.  

Just like his father, Icicle Junior has taken the road of villainy, becoming a member of The injustice Society of America.  When The ultra Humanite took over the world, however, Icicle joined forces with The Justice Society and played a pivotal role in saving the day.  As for Junior’s baby-mama, Tigress, she remains a villainess… in the DC Animated Universe of Young Justice, however, Artemis is very much a hero.  Feels like only a matter of time before the comic book universe follows suit, turing The tigress from villain to hero.  

Both Clayface and Man-Bat are less villains than they are victims of circumstance.  And while each have battled Batman more times than can be counted, there has also been times where the pair have aided The Dark Knight. 

Once heralded as the greatest of The Green Lanterns, Sinestro’s path to villainy came as a facet of his quest to bring order to the galaxy.  His tyrannical notions aside, there has still been plenty a time where he has once more joined forces with his former allies among the corps.  

Both The Rubber Band Man and Major Disaster began as villains, but switched over to being heroes.  Major Disaster even served for a brief while as a member of The Justice League International.  

Lobo is a genocidal trashbox who has most likely had inappropriate relations with space dolphins.  Yet people seem to like reading about this jerk which has foisted him into the role of antihero.  I still think he’s garbage, but will admit that his daughter is super cool.  

These three don’t even require particular mention.  Catwoman, Black Adam and Harley Quinn’s roles as hero/antihero have been enough that they receive placement on both the 365 Villains list as well a the 365 Heroes list.  Quite the accomplishment! 

A rarity on this list… Terra started out a hero but it was later revealed that she was a double agent, a villain sent by Deathstroke to infiltrate and betray the Teen Titans.  She perished but later returned again, either cloned or resurrected or something like that.  In any case, she’s a hero again so yay…

So there you have it, a collection of scum and villainy who have, on occasion, acted in the role of hero.  Have I missed anyone important?  Let me know.    

[kiragecko]

DC Sidekick Age References

Here’s a dump of all the references I’ve found. Know I’m missing a lot, and quite a few were found on other sites that didn’t give me the most precise info.

If you know of anything else, can correct a mistake you see, or want to discuss comic book aging - please send me an ask, message, or reblog!

?? - means I don’t know where the info is from, “quotes” are direct copies of the wording in the comic

-

?? Parents died when Bruce was 8

Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) – Batman introduced

Detective Comics #38 (Apr 1940)  – Dick is (8 when parents killed/9 when Robin) 12 when he becomes Robin, it's Bruce's 3rd year as Batman

More Fun Comics 73 (Nov 1941) – Green Arrow Introduced

1962 - JLA formed

1964 – Dick teams up with Wally and Garth

Teen Titans 1 (Jan-Feb 1966) – Teen Titans form, Donna is introduced (all 5 are 14ish?)

Detective 359 (Jan 1967) – Babs introduced, has PhD, has graduated

Batman #217 (Dec 1969) – Dick graduates high school, enrolls in University (starts 3 months later)

1971 - Roy discovered using drugs by Ollie and Hal in a drug den (he was trading arrows for drugs), retcon has Wally and Dick discovering him at tower and making him promise to get help

Justice League 116 (Mar-Apr 1975) Charley Parker is 16

Batman Family 10 (Mar-Apr 1977) – Dick is teenager, Babs is 25

Teen Titans 53 (Feb 1978) – Dick, Wally, Donna, Vic all started college at same time

DC Special Series: The Flash Spectacular (May 1978) – Wally graduates high school

New Teen Titans 1 (Nov 1980) – Raven forms New Titans, Gar is 16 during run

New Teen Titans 2 (Dec 1980) – Slade meets team, Grant dies

1981 - Dick drops out of university after 1 semester, he never really was interested

New Teen Titans 20 (June 1982) – Vic turns 19, Donna already is

Tales of the New Teen Titans 2 (July 1982) – Raven turned 18 just before forming Titans

Batman #357 (Mar 1983) – Jason’s first appearance

Detective Comics #526 (May 1983) – Bruce adopts Jason, Dick is there and approving

New Teen Titans 34 (Aug 1983) – Terra turns 16

Batman #368 (Feb 1984) – Dick gives Jason the Robin costume, Jason becomes Robin

Blue Devil(84) – Eddie is 11/12

Tales of the Teen Titans (May 1984) – Joey introduced, Author describes him as 17?

New Teen Titans #39 (Feb 1984) – Dick stops being Robin, Wally quits being a superhero/the team

Tales of the Teen Titans 50 (Feb 1985) – Terry and Donna's wedding (she got married while 19)

New Teen Titans 10 (July 1985) – Kole says she's at least 18

Crisis on Infinite Earths 7 (Oct 1985) – Supergirl dies in Superman’s arms after mostly destroying the Anti-Monitor, who has to flee reality

New Teen Titans 18 (Mar 1986) – Dick turns 20 (“Dick Grayson celebrates his birthday away from home with a traditional Tamaranean feast.” (While sulking because Kory got space-married))

New Teen Titans 20 (May 1986) – Roy locates baby Lian, Terry Long is 29

?? Roy is 22(when he gets Lian)

Batman #404 - Batman Year One (Feb 1987) – Bruce is 25, spent 12 years training, became Batman at 26, Barbara Gordon is pregnant, her and Jim move to Gotham

Detective Comics #571 (Feb 1987) – we see Bruce’s fear gas induced vision of Jason’s tombstone (birth: 1974 – death: 1986, so he’d be 12)

Secret Origins 13 (April 87) – 15 years ago, it was Dick’s 5th birthday. Soon after tenth birthday, parents are killed. [Set during New TT 18])

Batman #409 (July 1987) – Jason becomes Robin (In Detective Comics, Jason has been Robin the whole time, but is still being wwritten with Pre-Crisis personality)

Flash 1 (June 1987) – Wally turns 20

New Teen Titans Ann 3 (Nov 1987) – Danny Chase is 13 and introduced

Batman #416 (Feb 1988) – Dick in Gotham, meets the new Robin on patrol. Confronts Bruce later, says he was ‘fired’ less than a year ago (since then he was briefly in college), makes Bruce admit he missed him. Dick finds Jason again, expose the drug dealers, and Dick gives Jason his old costume (symbolically, since Jason already has one) and a phone number, Dick was Robin for 6 years

Batman #427 (Winter 1988) – Jason dies

Batman #436, Batman: Year Three (Aug 1989) – 2 years since Dick stopped being Bruce’s sidekick (When he became Nightwing? Or when he quit?), parents died 10 years earlier

Batman #441, A Lonely Place of Dying (Nov 1989) – Tim 13, was 7 when Dick’s parents died

Robin #1 (Jan 1991) – Tim debuts as Robin

New Titans 84 (March 1992) – Joey dies

Deathstroke, the Terminator #15 (Oct 1992) – Rose introduced

Team Titans 3 (Nov 1992) – Robert Long is born

Adventures of Superman 500 (June 1993) – Kon appears and escapes from Cadmus with Newboy Legion, John Henry Irons first appearance, Eradicator and Cyborg Superman also appear for first time

Batman: BTAS: Robin’s Reckoning (1993) - 'Richard 'Dick' Grayson: Age 10'

Detective Comics 668 (Nov 1993) – Tim gets license (because dad is disabled) even though he hasn’t turned 16 yet, gets beat up by Jean-Paul

Flash 92 (July 1994) – Bart aged to 14

?? Shortly after Knight’s End – Tim is 15 and in the 10th grade

Flash 0 (Oct 1994) – Wally is 23

Damage 1(94) – Grant is 16

Deathstroke, The Terminator Annual 4 (Aug 1995) – Rose is 14, “What would that do to a kid? A fourteen-year-old girl whose father is an assassin she’s never met?”

Wonder Woman 105(95) – Cassie is 14

Tempest 1(96) – Garth spends many months in other dimension

Aquaman 20 (May 1996) – Garth aged 3-4 years in other dimension, now older than other Titans

Teen Titans 1 (Oct 1996) – Argent, Risk, Joto, Prysm all turn 16(they were conceived by seed things on same day)

Superboy Annual 2 – to Kon: “Happy birthday, Kid - - number one in a long successful series, we hope.” “He will effectively remain sixteen years old - - forever!”

Green Lantern 82(97) – Robert Long is 3

Wonder Woman 121(97) – Terry and Robert die

Secret Origins Giant 1(98) – Bart is “Three. Fifteen. Depends.”, “you’re almost 15, Tim.”

Titans 5(99) – Donna is 23

Titans(99) – Lian is 4

Sins of Youth(99) – Kon 16, aging normally again

Aquaman 63 (Jan 2000) – Future Garth tells granddaughter Donna about Cerdian being born (think this is his weird birth issue)

Wonder Woman Secret Files (2002) – „Wonder Girl is a precocious outgoing 15-year-old named Cassandra „Cassie“ Sandsmark.“

Bruce Wayne: Murderer (2002) – Oracle says Tim is 15

Batgirl #37 (April 2003) – “Cain said ... today was ... my birthday.”

Batgirl #39 (June 2003) – “I see an eighteen-year-old girl, who’s out of her depth.” (Babs about Cass)

Robin #116 (Sept 2003) – Dana: “Oh, I’m so glad we’ll all be together on Thursday ... !” Tim: “Why? What’s Thursday?” Jack: “Yeah. What’s Thursday?” Dana: “Wait a minute – seriously? Tim: “Yeah. Tell. Us.” Dana: “It’s nothing – never mind. Just leave your schedules open for a nice family dinner.”| Jack: “Dana, what’s – “ Dana: “Shh! Thursday ...  the 19th of July ... ?” Jack: “Um ... oh! Right!” | Steph: “So – Thursday!! Are you excited? Got any ideas for it, yet? ... Tim ... ?” [Tim is asleep.] | [Ives and Steph come over, with pizza that says “Happy B-Day Tim.”] Ives: “Sixteen spankings – get that boy up!!” | Dana says: “I remember when I was in 11th grade.” | he also gets the first ‘clue’ for Bruce’s ‘birthday present.’

Teen Titans 1 (Nov 2003) – Gar is 19, Is this Joey’s return?? (He’s puppeting Slade)

Teen Titans ½ (2004) – Rose’s early years, with a ‘6 years ago’ flashback, she was raised in a brothel her mom ran, tutored, never allowed the outside world, but had relationships with kids her age

Detective Comics #790 (Mar 2004) – Jason’s 18th birthday “he would have been 18 today”

Teen Titans 8 (April 2004) – Raven looks 'barely older' than Cassie

TEEN TITANS #1/2 [2004]: The flashback panels totally sync up with my age theories; Flash to 10 years ago: Dick Grayson’s parents die. Flash to 6 years ago: Rose Wilson is schooled at home by her mother, Lili. Flash to 5 years ago: Ravager I is killed. Flash to 3 years ago: Slade is forced to kill Jericho. Flash to 2 years ago: Cadmus attempts to clone Superman. Flash to 18 months ago: Rose deals with the death of her mother. Flash to one week ago: Bart Allen is shot by Slade.

Identity Crisis 4 (Dec 2004) –(Tim still 16)

Green Arrow 47(05) – Mia is 17

Return of Donna Troy 3(05) – Cassie barely 16

Nightwing: Year One(05) – Dick is 26

Batgirl #65 (Aug 2005) – Cass decides to figure out if Shiva is her mom, Jason and Cass roughly the same age

Flash(05/06) – Wally is 26

?? Robin #136 – Tim still 16 ???

Detective Comics #868 (Oct 2010)– Kate is 32 years old??

One Year Later(Mar 06)

Flash 1(06) – Bart 4 years older(20?)

Blue Beetle 2 (June 2006) – Find out Jaime was in space/a pocket dimension for One Year Later

?? Just prior to 52 (July 2006-July 2007)– told Tim is 17 (long before he’s also  17 in Red Robin, 52 is 1 year long)

Teen Titans 42 (Feb 2007) – Eddie is 17

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds 3-4 (Apr-June 2009) – Bart and Kon back, same as when died

Batman 677 (July 2008) – Batman over 30

Batman: Battle for the Cowl (May-July 2009) – Damian is 10, Ends with Dick and Damian becoming Batman and Robin

Brave & The Bold 2 (May 2007) – Kara is 17, “You have food in the refrigerator older than her, Hal. Who are you, Ollie? No bad thoughts. She’s seventeen.”

Batgirl #1 (Oct 2009) – Steph starting college

Batgirl #7 (Apr 2010) - Damian is "what happens when you work with a 10-year-old."

Red Robin #12 (July 2010) – Tim spent “a few months” looking for evidence before returning to Gotham, becomes emancipated minor

Detective Comics #871 (Jan 2011)– Mention that Dick and Babs went to prom together

Red Robin #25 (Sept 2011) – Tim “and you are only 17”

The Batman Files (Oct 2014) – Jason was 15 at death (seen on death certificate)

?? Rebirth Young Justice series – Cassie: “didn’t mean to end up back in high school feeling - - like I did back when I went to high school.” Later, she says she’s in Metropolis “Working. Going to school in the fall.” So she’s probably starting college.

?? Bart in some Rebirth comic: “Am I six? Am I nineteen? That’s a really freaky thing, right?”

?? At some point: Donna says shes a little older than Kyle

[bigskydreaming]

Making this its own post because replying to the ask got so weirdly formatted I can’t even. Oh tumblr. You work so well.

@themessofthecentury  asked:

jsksjf my tumblr notifs are bugging and i didnt see your post but!!! The patron Saint of Robins?? I am much intrigue!!

(This is from this ask game, just....gotten to late, lololol. And I still have more I’m getting to, no worries. Just had a rough couple days is all, laid me up a bit.)

Okay, so The Patron Saint of Robins is kinda like the situation at the end of Grayson, except also not at all. And actually this is one of my older WIPs, and according to Scrivener I started it in 2015 afhislfhalhfalf, so it really has nothing to do with that. Also, its Young Justice-verse, but for two specific reasons:

1) YJ-verse is my go-to for Good Dad Bruce Wayne, when I don’t want to actually tackle the issues I have with his and his kids’ dynamic in comic book canon. I don’t carry over things like the adoption issue or the Robin succession into YJ fics, as I don’t think there’s anything that suggests they’re ever a specific issue in YJ and I don’t feel a need to make them one. So pretty much anything and everything I write in YJ goes with the backstory that Dick’s already adopted by Season One, and he’s the one to grant each later Robin permission to use the mantle, with no conflict over that, and more of a pre-Crisis transition to Nightwing than the post-Crisis firing from Robin. And this fic inherently needs Good Dad Bruce Wayne to work, lol.

2) I needed Klarion the Witch-Boy. Who of course exists in comic book canon, but is muuuuuch different there, and I just needed him to be a little demonic evil shithead, who sets everything in motion to get payback on the heroes for thwarting the Light in Season One, and he targets Robin due to being the oft-cited ‘first of the baby brat heroes’ and the ‘heart of the cape community.’

You don’t really need to be familiar with YJ canon at all for this one, as it goes sharply AU from after Season One, and only faintly and vaguely references specific events from that season. And I use my own YJ-ized version of the Titans as much as the actual YJ Team.

So basically, the plot of this one is to take revenge on the heroes for spoiling his game in Season One, Klarion plays a new game, by putting a chaos curse on Robin. It essentially erases him from peoples’ memories, though he’s perfectly able to make new ones. If he re-introduces himself to someone ask Dick Grayson, for instance, they don’t suddenly remember who Dick Grayson is or was, but they don’t forget about him again from that point onward, its like they meet him for the first time as a stranger.

But the curse part of things is only Batman can break it and restore everyone’s memories of Dick and his actual history, and only by identifying him for who he really is. And Dick can’t be part of breaking his own curse or else it seals it and makes it permanent and unbreakable forever.

Which of course leaves Dick completely miserable at first, understandably, and Bruce (and everyone else Dick knows, to varying different degrees) feeling some kind of loss but with no idea what it is they think or feel that they’re missing. Dick makes some half-hearted attempts at starting a new life for himself in Gotham, and in the process befriends a street kid named Jason Todd, though Dick introduces himself to Jason with just the name Robin.

The way the curse operates is it restitches together peoples’ memories to cover up the gaps where memories of him would go. So for instance, even though Jason never knew Dick before the curse, he was familiar with Batman and Robin just as much as any Gothammite was.....but due to the curse, the name Robin, upon meeting Dick, had no special meaning to him or anyone else. As far as he knew, Batman had always operated on his own in Gotham, the first teen superhero was that Speedy kid in Star City, etc. So when Jason first meets Dick, he just thinks he’s some dude whose name happens to be Robin.

Eventually, because Dick’s been kinda torturing himself by spying on Bruce just to ‘keep an eye on him’ and still watch his back, and he’s recognized by now that Bruce is mourning his loss without even knowing that he’s missing something....so Dick, who has also kinda come to see Jason as a little brother figure due to watching out for him as well....decides to kill two birds with one stone, unfortunate pun not intended. (Jason doesn’t die in this one, lol). Basically, Dick puts in motion the chain of events that lead Jason to stealing Batman’s tires, because he doesn’t know EXACTLY what Bruce will do but he knows it’ll get his attention in a big way and Bruce will take it from there.

One thing leads to another, Jason ends up living with Bruce and when eventually he wants to be trained by Bruce so he can do what he does and protect kids like he used to be.....when asked to pick a name....Jason names himself after the guy who always looked out for him, and who led to him being found by Bruce in the first place. He doesn’t know that his friend ‘Robin’ steered him towards those tires deliberately, just to bring him and Bruce into contact, but he does credit him with making the suggestion that ‘inadvertently’ (as far as he knows) enabled his and Bruce’s introduction, and so he names himself in honor of the boy who helped him and who he tried to track down again to similarly help, after Bruce adopted him, but was never able to find again.

Over the years, Dick also ends up steering Tim, Cass, Duke and Damian to Bruce in different ways than comic book canon (Steph and Babs’ debuts remain their own, as family adjacent but not family specifically) and thus is integral to the forming of the Batfam and has a connection with them even before the curse ultimately ends up broken and he’s able to reclaim his full identity. And each of them end up Robin at least briefly, like Steph is never Robin in this AU, and sticks with Spoiler, whereas Cass IS briefly Robin before becoming Batgirl after Babs. I did this for a few different reasons...

One, I really like that Cass is never Robin in main continuity as it creates a different dynamic between her and Dick than most of their siblings have, BUT I’ve always been curious to play around what Cass-as-Robin might even be like, just for an AU. Two, part of the Black Bat and Batgirl but never Robin sequence of mantles for Cass in the comic book continuity is like.....although it doesn’t get explored nearly enough, Babs was as much a kind of mother figure for Cass as Bruce was a father figure, despite Babs’ young age. So it makes more sense for Cass to stick more to just Bat-mantles than to ever be a Robin in the comic books. But in YJ, Babs is even younger, and just way too young to have the specific kind of dynamic that leads to that in the comic books, so its not as unreasonable IMO for her to have a different dynamic in her early days in the family here, before becoming closer with Babs and taking up the Batgirl mantle after she moves on to become Oracle.

And then also, and this is also the primary reason for making Duke a Robin briefly, before Damian is old enough....I got hung up on the title and it just didn’t work as well if it was Robins + Cass and Duke, lololol. See, in addition to helping steer the family into the points of introduction that make them a family, over the years he also acts as like, a guardian angel figure to the various family members, looking out for them and interceding in times of extreme danger, like when Jason is almost killed by the Joker. He’s always in disguise, but the kids eventually compare notes and realize there’s a singular figure behind each of their introductions to Bruce and the guy swooping out of nowhere to save their behinds whenever they’re most in danger, and Jason eventually connects this back to the guy who apparently NOT so coincidentally suggested he go after the Batmobile’s tires that fateful night, and the kids end up jokingly/not-so-jokingly referring to this figure as the Patron Saint of Robins. (Shout-out to the occasional mentions/allusions of Jason’s Catholicism).

They never tell Bruce about this figure (at least before Bruce starts to put together clues on his own), because they all figured out that for whatever reason, this person despite wanting them all to meet Bruce seems to want to avoid Bruce himself, and they kinda want to respect that as a kind of payback for his help, and also like....Bruce, even a kinder, gentler Bruce, is still Bruce. And when Bruce is gonna Bruce, that means Batparanoia. And all of them for various reasons DO trust that this guy has nothing but good intentions towards them, and so they don’t want to like....ruin or tarnish the positivity they associate with his intercession in their lives with paranoia or treating him like a bad guy. Which ultimately is really just smoke and mirrors for saying that he’s kinda a ‘just for them’ secret. Its a Robin thing.

(Until its not).

Because meanwhile, Dick, in between meeting the various Batfam members and pulling strings and looking out for them from the shadows, at first travels the world looking for ways to break his curse. But when ultimately its clear that the only way to break it is the loophole built into it already, Bruce identifying him for who he really is, but without Dick doing anything to steer him towards the answer, Dick settles into a new hero identity as Nightwing, and forms the Teen Titans, a public group of young superheroes (minus Roy and Wally, unfortunately, but still with Donna, Garth, Raven, Kory, ignoring season 3 Vic and also Terra because AU redemption arc what what, etc). And the Teen Titans avoid both the Young Justice Team and the Justlce League with EXTREME measures, much to the other heroes’ confusion and aggravation, because in the early days of the Titans, in a moment of what he’d term weakness, on one of his ‘bad days,’ Dick tells them enough of his story that they’re able to put together a good sense of what happened and who he really is by reading between the lines and what he leaves unsaid....

BUT as a result, all end up extremely committed to not mixing and mingling casually with the rest of the cape community because they don’t want to risk dropping any hints about the guy under Nightwing’s mask, in case that might count as steering Batman towards clues and seal the curse for good. So I have a lot of fun with having the Titans just nope out of the scene the second the bad guys are defeated even when they have to team up with other heroes, leaving the other heroes confused as hell and trying not to be all ‘WHY DON’T YOU LIKE US??”

Anyway, so yeah, that’s the gist of this one, lol. With it of course following the eventual plot that like...the Batfam starts to Detect and put things together.

ANYWHO!

Snippet

Damian versus Klarion: Round One

“Aww, its adorable that you think you’re in my league,” the Witch-Boy cooed in an absolute mockery of sympathy. Damian bristled, but before he could do anything more than that, he was faced with a much more pressing matter as reality completely lost its mind.

The walls of the cavern fell away in an instant, only to be replaced with a whirling dervish of winds all around them, as if they now stood in the center of a cyclone that bled red and silver and black. It shrieked and wailed in a chorus of voices just on the other side of being comprehensible, a symphony of the damned that set every nerve in Damian’s body aflame with a primal instinct to get out, to find silence, to be anywhere but here.

He’d barely staggered a step backwards when the ground erupted beneath him, splitting apart into jagged obsidian shards that bobbed precariously in the sea of magma barely glimpsed through cracks now spiderwebbing their way across the floor. Spears of lightning burst upwards through them, stabbing impossibly at the heavens rather than raining down from them. They hissed and crackled as they flickered like forked serpent tongues of electric violet and black. The forks becoming branches, the pillars of sky-shattering light transforming into the trunks of great trees that grew upwards and outward, weaving a canopy overhead. One that wept violently red leaves that fell gently to the ground, only to hiss and bubble like acid once they did.

“See, normally this is when I’d hit someone with a little razzle-dazzle like this,” Klarion called out over the song of madness he’d created, as it crooned and careened wildly all around them. He snapped his fingers, and in the span of a second it all ceased. Reality reaffirmed itself, and all was right with the world once more…except now the two of them stood at the end of a hallway in Wayne Manor.

Damian stumbled, the sudden reappearance of firm ground paradoxically being the thing to challenge his balance. The demon boy standing beside him crooked his thumb and forefinger in the semblance of a gun, the smile pasted across his face one of wickedly gleeful malice.

“But you, kiddo, you’re special. Cuz there’s nothing I could do to you now that could top what I’ve already done, so why try when I can just savor the moment instead?”

“What are you babbling about?” Damian demanded roughly. In the wake of what the Witch-Boy had just conjured up with nothing more than a gesture, he was keenly aware of how flimsy a shield his bravado made. He just had absolutely no idea what else to fall back on.

Klarion only threw back his head and laughed though, skipping merrily down the hall as he did.

“I know something you don’t know,” he sing-songed and Damian lost what little grasp of his patience he’d managed to hang onto.

“You overestimate my need for an answer. Attempt to intimidate me all you wish, but I have no desire to indulge your little game any further.”

Klarion jerked to a stop and spun around, his face screwed into a childish pout. He stomped his foot, petulance personified. “I’m not intimidating you anymore, I’m gloating! Ugh, you’re so stupid! They’re completely different, how can you not tell?”

Every light in the hallway flickered and fizzed abruptly. The walls wavered, bubbled, momentarily molten as if made of wax.

Again Damian was reminded just how mercurial this being he was faced with was, and how dangerous. Perhaps, as Father would say, this was not the time to indulge his own instinctive inclinations. Or as Todd would put it, just because you’re already fucked, that’s no reason to fuck yourself over more than you have to.

Crude as his older brother was, there was occasional merit to his…pithiness. Not that he would be admitting that any time soon, of course.

“Fine. What is it you wish to gloat about then?” Damian grated out. The appeasement, such as it was, tried its best to stick in his throat before finally clawing its way free. But at least it proved worth the effort when the godling’s mood reverted back to impishness as readily as with the flip of a switch.

“Well. Its like this, you see.” Klarion said. He dragged it out as he folded both legs underneath him to sit cross-legged in the air, plopping his head into his hands. “I did a baaaaaaaaaaaaad, bad thing to your family, a loooooong time ago. And none of you have done anything about it, because you don’t even know! Isn’t that funny? Doesn’t matter how big a hero Daddy Bats is if he doesn’t even know what needs saving huh? Little Catch-22 there, you might say.”

“Yes. Quite hysterical,” Damian said dryly. “So what is it you claim to have done then?”

The Witch-Boy just sat there, regarding him with amusement, and the seconds marched on into minutes. Damian’s skin crawled. Prickling with impatience and possibly something…more. He wasn’t quite ready to name it anxiety or something as melodramatic as all that yet. In fact, he’d rather not put a name to it at all, but today did not appear to be a day for configuring things to his liking.  

Klarion’s wicked grin grew as if sensing his thoughts, though to the best of his knowledge (and Damian did quickly ransack the library of his memory just to be sure) there was no indication telepathy was included among the Chaos Lord’s many, many powers. And still that detestable smile stretched slowly wider all the same, in perfect synchronization with the rising tide of Damian’s unease. Perhaps the Witch-Boy’s file was in need of annotation.

“How many doors would you say are in this hallway?”

“What? Seven.” Damian snapped out his answer, annoyed by the non sequitur. Not to mention baffled. Was it too much to expect even a semblance of linear thought from the Chaos brat?

“Are you suuuuuuure?” The Witch-Boy stretched his query out obnoxiously. “Maybe you should count again. Just for kicks and giggles.”

Damian throttled back each and every retort attempting to spring to his lips, stuffing them back down and cramming a lid on everything he most dearly wished to say to this most vexing of…shitheads. Once again, it appeared as though nothing less than Todd’s preferred form of nomenclature would suffice. Wonderful. On top of everything else Damian had to deal with today, he seemed to be finding common ground with the man all over the place. Was there no end to the indignities he must suffer?

But marshaling his own formidable willpower, Damian took a deep breath and indulged the Chaos Lord, glancing his eyes down the length of the hallway and counting out each doorway one by one. There was his own room of course, with Cassandra’s to the right of his, and the room Brown used when staying over to the right of hers. That was three. Then there was Thomas directly across from his own room, with Drake to his right and Todd just beyond that, with Father’s room at the very end of the hall, his master suite staggered and with no direct opposite like the others. Seven.

Except all of a sudden there was a door directly opposite his father’s. For a total of eight.

Damian’s brow furrowed in consternation. The faint whispers of uncertainty already seeded throughout him bore fruit, ripening into poisonous stabbings of doubt.

“That’s not real,” he stated with as much conviction as he could muster.

The Witch-Boy’s smile only grew wider still. “Isn’t it, though?”

“There’s never been a door there before,” Damian persisted, striding confidently down the hall towards it. The Chaos Lord flitted ahead of him, inverting til he was upside down and skipping merrily once more, though this time from the ceiling.

“Or has it been there all along?” He sing-songed some more.

“I would think we might have noticed if it had been,” Damian growled.

“Yes, you’d think, wouldn’t you? You are all supposed to be a family of detectives, I thought. Makes you wonder…if you could miss this, what else might you have failed to notice?”

Damian snarled to himself and did his best to shut out the demon boy’s prattling. He quickened his strides, eating up the length of the hallway in his haste to reach its end. He wasn’t sure what opening the door would prove, let alone what bewilderment the godling had conjured on its other side, but it appeared the only end to this game of his was through it, so let there be an end to it already.

And yet, for all his certainty - or best facsimile of it - he couldn’t help but pause once he reached the door in question. His hand hovered within reach of its brass knob, but some instinct, some…caution, held him at bay. As much as he wanted to dismiss all this as just one more of the Chaos Lord’s inane charades, there was a tension in the air that felt too weighty to be the product of just magical conjuring. Something more was in play here. Real forces were at work. His father might disdain magic, but Damian had been around enough of it himself to know when true power had been raised. And the span of empty space between his hand and this hither-to-unseen doorknob held more of it than Damian had felt throughout all the mad warpings Klarion had made of reality thus far.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Klarion asked from somewhere overhead. His voice, usually pitched to carry, was so soft for a moment Damian mistook it for his own inner doubts. “Some doors are easier to open than to close again, you know.”

Even knowing the goading for what it was couldn’t stop Damian then, and with a simple breath to fortify himself, he reached for the knob, spun it once, and shoved the door open all in a single sharp movement.

The Witch-Boy giggled up above.

The door swung wide, a forceful arc that should have revealed anything and everything within it all at once; the better to react quickly to whatever that might be. Fine in principle, perfect in execution, but thwarted by one small detail:

There was nothing on the other side.

And not in the sense of it being just an empty room, but true nothingness. A pitch-black abyss darker than the deepest night, yawning forth from the doorway in a vast, impenetrable shroud. Nor was anything hidden in the darkness, Damian knew, even if just intuitively. He could feel it, that he stood on the edge of an impossible cliff, that there was nothing beyond this threshold but an aching chasm of emptiness and loss. The surety of it hung in the air, thick and heavy, a miasma that seeped through to his side of the doorway and clung to him like the moisture of a fog beads upon the skin.

Klarion’s head suddenly popped up alongside him, hovering just over his shoulder.

Albeit still upside down.

“Well that doesn’t seem right,” he mused, tapping at his lips with a forefinger. “What do you suppose is meant to be in there?”

The last of Damian’s brittle patience shattered.

“Enough! What is the meaning of all this, demon? Speak plainly, for once in your miserable existence!”

His self-preservation instincts and the reminder of just who it was he was shouting at kicked in too little too late, but he wouldn’t take his exasperated fury back even if he could. He was who he was after all. But fortunately, that described the Witch-Boy just as accurately, and rather take offense or perceive any actual threat from Damian’s rage, the Chaos Lord just shrieked with laughter and sprung backwards. He flipped right side up, still hovering in mid-air, and clapped his hands with glee.

“Oh, I should have done this ages ago,” Klarion sang out. “Why, you’re almost as fun as he used to be. Back before he got all droll and serious, that is. He’s no fun at all anymore, nothing like this. Never wants to play, always just running back to his tower with that little bitch of a demoness.”

His face soured like he’d just sucked on a lemon. But rather than stop there, his countenance kept morphing into an increasingly savage scowl, the longer he ranted. The hallway was suddenly sweltering, baking with unseen heat that twisted the air into shimmering ribbons. The small horns sprouting from his forehead burst into scimitars of flame that cut through those ribbons and set them similarly ablaze.

“Always putting on airs like she’s some kind of royalty, just because her Daddy Dearest put the fear into a few peasants back in the day,” the Witch-Boy snarled viciously. “As if that’s enough to put her on par with the likes of me. No one is the likes of me. NO ONE!”

Reality itself quaked with the force of his shout. White-blue flames spat forth and crescendoed down the length of the corridor, splashing against its walls and searing them to a crisp. Damian braced himself for all the good it would do, keenly aware of the void still gaping hungrily behind his back, but before the fire could become an actual danger to him as well, all was quiet once more.

Silence hung in the air much like the demon boy, poised yet motionless. Suspended. Waiting.

And then Klarion simply inhaled and brushed his hands down the front of his garments, smoothing out the wrinkles as he reclaimed his calm. The corridor restored itself to its former self, curtains of vintage reality unrolling from the ceiling to the floor as though papering over the damage. Damian felt rather than saw when the portal behind him swung shut and was replaced with the expanse of ivory paint and ornate sconces he was used to seeing in its place.

“I am one of a kind, after all,” Klarion finally remarked. It was a casual drawl offered forth almost off-handedly, as if more a reminder to himself than uttered for anyone else’s sake. He used one hand to spell out letters in the air. They appeared and vanished again in bursts of fireworks and fluorescent flame. “U-N-I-Q-U-E.”

“As I, apparently, am not,” Damian said, seizing upon the Chaos Lord’s restored calm and good cheer. “Who is this ‘he’ you mentioned? If I’m to be pitted against him as entertainment in your eyes, might I at least know his name?”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” the Witch-Boy scolded. He wagged his finger at Damian. “No spoilers. That’s not how the game is played.”

Keenly aware of the boy’s power once more, Damian gritted his teeth and pressed on. “Well, if there are to be rules, shouldn’t I at least know what those are?”

Klarion sucked in a deep breath, drawing himself up along with his inhalation as though preparing for some great speech…and instead just toppling backward, flopping onto an extravagant fainting couch that suddenly appeared beneath him, though similarly floating in the air.

“I can’t recall at the moment.” His now-faint voice drifted up from where he lay buried amid a mountain of pillows. “I’ve had a terribly exhausting day. But you’re supposed to be a detective, remember? Go…I don’t know. Detect things.”

He flapped an arm at Damian dismissively, and then crooked a finger into a twirling motion that set his divan to spinning in lazy circles.

“Isn’t life grand?” Klarion sighed fondly. “With all its twists and turns, its eddies and swirls. I mean, take the two of us. Scant hours ago, we were mortal enemies, and just look at us now.”

The Witch-Boy lazily rolled his head to the side as the couch drifted to bring him face-to-face with Damian. His lips spread wide in that malevolent, wicked grin of his once again, but somehow it managed to be even wider than any he’d shown off before. His eyes blazed with a hellish inner light, and his voice, when next he spoke, dropped deep into a demonic register. A bass that boomed forth and set Damian’s very bones to rattling.

“Ain’t we got fun?”

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

top ten things comic writers fucked up

Marvel

10) House of M ending with NO MORE MUTANTS, fucking up years of continuity and shattering the whole community and shit. Given the circumstances I add Wanda and Franklin Richards suddenly losing their status as Mutants for bullshit reason (In the case of Franklin it was due to that bitch Dan Slott being a petty bitch).

9) The Ultimate Universe, but, like, not all of it, just the worst parts. Like that one time the Blob ate Janet Van Dyne alive for starters.

8) That one time Peter Parker was sexually assaulted by the Spider-Queen or some shit, which lead to him getting pregnant with himself, turn into a giant spider before dying and giving birth to his human body. This is also here because his wife MJ berates him for being, again, sexually assaulted, which is bad.

7) House of M having Peter's big wish be about him being married to Gwen with kids and MJ is a rich famous actress (homo sapiens actress in a pretty much mutant ethnostate? A testament to her skills I guess). Like, just the whole "Peter doesn't REALLY want to date MJ and thinks he's be happier with Gwen" and "MJ would be happier and more fulfilled in her career if she was single" propaganda bullshit Marvel keeps to spout.

6) I'm pretty sure there was a thing with Arcade and underage people dying during some death games? Either that one or Sins Past but that would make this a bit too much Spider-Man centric tho.

5) Dan Slott killing off MC2 Peter as well as several happy MJ X Peter couples from different universes during comic book Spider-Verse because he is a petty bitch.

4) Civil War being pretty much a allegory of the Patriot Act and still trying to paint it as a good thing, while also enforcing shit like concentration camps and bomb collared villain slave cops and also child soldiers programs and shit.

3) That one time Dan Slott almost had Felicia get r*ped in a woman prison post Superior Spider-Man because he has a issue with women. In fact, Dan Slott general treatment of female characters really, with how he treated Silk (his creation too mind you) in the context of Peter, The way he treated MJ and had Superior Ock almost r*pe her, the way he writes whatever sexually liberated woman in general, and I guess him trying to pull the same thing he did with Silk and Peter, but with Johnny and Sky, but instead of using spider-pheromones he used magical alien bracelets of love instead.

2) Avengers 200 attempting to "kill off" Carol from the narrative by having a extra dimensional being r*pe her via mind control and get her pregnant with himself so they can remove her from the team and have her "retire" in the extra dimensional being's dimension without ONE avenger raising objection to that.

1) One More Day and One Moment in Time as a concept. Period.

0) The Clone Saga as a whole I guess? Like, pretty much nothing surpasses that in fucked up shit, so here it is as special mention.

DC Comics

10) Amazon Attack. Like, as a whole, but especially the Female Concentration Camps the US President set up during the invasion. With trains running on time and all that.

9) That one time Kyle Rayner's girlfriend got cut to pieces and stuffed in a fridge for pure shock value.

8) Like, I get the story Moore was trying to make, but The Brutalisation of Barbara during the Killing Joke was unnecessary and also dumb (who the fuck doesn't check the peephole of their door in FUCKING GOTHAM). The animated adaptation was also bad.

7) That one time they fucked up Cass' whole character. You know, the one where she implied she wanted to bang Tim and shot her dad with a magical flintlock pistol with two bullets in it for some reason.

6) I guess that one time they had Wonderdog be revealed to be a hellhound and have him murder Marvin in front of Wendy before traumatizing and paralyzing her for life, and just to do some edgy "this is NOT your grandpappy super friends!" Or some shit.

5) Deathstroke seducing Terra, a literal underage girl, and the narrative presenting it as either Normal or as her being evil or some shit, like, the whole thing was icky especially how they treated her and the fallout of it all.

4) The whole "Batman can't be happy AND Batman" bullshit they used to fuck over Bruce and Selina's wedding.

3) The treatment Wally West got at times. Like, him becoming a mass murderer recently for starters. Not him being best buds with literal Fidel Castro tho that was extremely "based," as the youngsters these days say.

2) Hal Jordan as a whole, either him being even more of a republican compared to the LITERAL CEO Oliver Queen (Socialist compared to him, him dating a minor and saying it's fine since her ring aged her up to "legal" age, or that one time some jackass wrote he had a threesome with two members of the Gail Simone's Birds of Prey because they were projecting.

1) That one time an Apokolips Dude used mind powers to shoot a porno with Big Barda and Superman, pretty much committing r*pe on them.

0) You know that one time Sue Dibny was pregnant and they had her get killed for dumb reasons and shock value? Yeah, this isn't about that. I mean, it's ALSO about that, but more specifically, this is about that one time they had Doctor Light become a r*pist and then fucked his mind to turn him into a joke. That whole thing was trash since it also had Deathstroke solo the new Justice League as if that's how it works. Also the whole "villains can't change it become better unless mind fuckery is involved" bullshit shit like this and similar stories did, which is indeed less serious than this mind you, but is still related.

[toasterimatoaster]

Opinions from an average viewer

(Aka, me just talking about young justice bc I have no one to talk too about this!)

So Young justice? Love it, great show and of course has its highs and lows. With season 3 out since la- no wait, uh- over a year ago It’s back in business with new characters furthering plot and much more. A new season, coming soon, probably next year.  

Now as the heading says I’m gonna go on an opinion tangent, and remember this is not end all be all, you don’t have to read this, I’m just a person on the internet with rather mellow thoughts and ideas, they’re not hot takes. Also before you continue reading:

Spoilers ahead!

I’m very happy that it got a 3rd season, especially with how season 2 ended,,, with, well you know, Wally dying and all. And boy do we get reminders of that in season 3, not only the ‘explicit’(more obvious) scenes and episodes that are dedicated to that but also smaller things,, like that ending credit scene with bruce lee and that music score; that made me tear up a bit actually, not Artemis ‘meeting’ Wally in the ‘afterlife’, not Dick reminiscing and accidentally using his name instead of Will’s, but a dog with a little Kid Flash plushie and bittersweet music. I feel like while the other two scenes were the characters coming to terms with Wally’s death and or showing that they’re still mourning him, that ending credit scene was something else entirely,,, hmm I don’t know how to describe it? 

Anyway these episodes and scenes were good character development and side plots,, The main plot is multiple, obviously one is where both the justice league and young justice team falls apart as well the continuing rise of the threat of Apokolips, The Light and Darkside. 

The teams we have now are, Justice league, Batman Inc, The outsiders and the  Young Justice team. 

Now, plot is always difficult to write and combining it with character development is even harder to do, and sometimes this show favors plot and plot set-up more than character development. I feel like this happens rather much in season 3, we get more and more knowledge about this world, about it’s conflicts, about the threats and the developments that happen, that I feel like they sometimes loose the charm that the first season did good on. We have a bigger cast, and adding more characters means that we are going to loose some people along the way. 

Let’s take an example: season 1 had 7 characters to focus on, Robin(Dick), Wally, Artemis, M’gann, Conner, Kaldur and Roy.(Also Zatanna and Rocket later on.)  Already a big cast, but every character got some development and we got to know them more, all the while both plot was either brewing or already happening. 

Season 2 got a time jump, with new characters into the roster. With not only the original 7 but now also Garfield, Cassie, Tim, Bart, Jaime, OG Roy, Tye, Eduardo, Asami, Virgil and Fishboy.. I’m sorry I don’t remember his name... Anyway! The focus was still on the OG 7 but now also on some of the new people, that is like 17 characters! We had plenty of plot lines, the invasion, the villain infiltration, the mind manipulation, the meta-humanization, the clone registration, the future boy creation(Bart)--- I’m trying to rhyme--- So A LOT. The writers were mostly able to do it well, considering what they had to work with. But I feel like some of the characters that got the least development were Cassie, Fishboy and Tim.  

Season 3 has a smaller time jump, we now have even more characters, some of them are just there and don’t have speaking lines, it’s bigger, their universe that was once the justice league and 7 teens are now.. a lot. As I said before we follow the Og’s, and then the new characters like Brion, Halo and Forager. 

Here are some personal bouts with this season: 

Firstly, one of the plots are the deconstruction and creation of teams. Sometimes I felt like it was almost parodic, at least the outsiders and Gar. It felt like it was trying to achieve season one’s team creation, but it didn’t measure up, at least for me. (And it’s not like I'm angry that they made their own team, I’m really not, I’m curious. It’s just the way that they went about it that peeves me.)

Secondly, is that there was a lot of plot set-up for next season. Both smaller thing, that might never happen (like HAL HAS WHITE HAIR/SIDES, GOSH IS THIS A SET UP FOR PARALLAX AND KYLE???)(Also, WALLY!!!), and bigger plot things like the whole Brion thing, that is obviously coming back. Plot-set up doesn’t have to be bad, but it again down comes to the balancing act of it all. Some of it felt shoved in a bit, some did not, some was obvious and some a bit more discreet. 

Anyway, this show sometimes looses that personal touch it once had, it’s one of the downsides to having everything focus on a bigger badder plot (to me), and sometimes constantly bringing in new characters can also be a downside. But they tried, especially with that Wally thing and the character development surrounding that. 

And if you like them doing this, that’s great, enjoy! Don’t let my opinions destroy your fun! 

Personal criticisms aside I of course enjoy this show, I wouldn’t be watching it and talking about it if I didn’t, It doesn’t give me grief and make me exhausted(which is always +100). But I'm pointing out some changes that I feel has happened, that might not always be positive or negative. 

So,,, that’s done. 

Btw I'm happy for Terra!

Also, About that theorizing thing,,, HAL WITH HIS WHITE HAIR, I’m not sorry, HAL HAS WHITE HAIR, EITHER HE’S JUST PREMATURELY GRAY OR HE IS GONNA BECOME PARALLAX, there’s no in-between.( jk, jk)

Also Also, GUY, we see GUY AND HIS HORRIBLE SONG. I love that song, it’s great. 

Also x3, the legion of superheroes; I had no clue what that was, being new to dc comics and all, but then I saw some posts and I’ve heard some theories about them and Wally,, and ahhhhhh.

Gosh, there is so much in this show, good and bad things and middle ground things, and yeah that’s all, It’s just rambles nothing else.

:D!

[northoftheroad]

2019 – good riddance

All in all, 2019 was a pretty shitty year for Dick Grayson.

The Nightwing title was treading water with the amnesiac "Ric" storyline. And with no interaction with his Bat-family, Wayne family or dozens of friends from Titans, Justice League etc. to make the story more interesting.

In other DC titles in the current continuity, Dick has lost several of his oldest friends. Alfred and Roy are dead (courtesy of writer Tom King), Donna is somehow evil, Wally is a murderer (again, "thank you", Tom King).

In DCeased, DC's zombie event, Dick was one of the first to succumb to the virus. (Written by Tom Taylor, art Trevor Hairsine, James Harren, Stefano Gaudiano).

In Dark Multiverse: Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (written by Mat Groom and Kyle Higgins, art by Tom Raney) Dick, together with all his friends, family and most everyone, were killed. What's left of humanity is terrorized by a changed Terra who's calling herself (itself?) Gaia. And the reason that this Universe took another course was Dick's empathy and effort to reach out to Terra, no less...

In Batman: Last Knight on Earth (by Scott Snyder, art Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion), Dick is almost killed. Damian, Tim, Jason, Kate and many more are already dead when the comic starts; Dick and those who are left fights as Owls. Dick and Barbara Gordon, by the way, has a daughter, Bryce. 

But as far as I understand, the story ends on a hopeful note. A baby Kal-El, the next Superman, falls to Earth to be raised by the new Batman (a clone of the original Bruce Wayne, who turned out to be the bad guy in this book) and what is left of the Bat-family. And Dick is back in the old finger stripes. So I suppose that's the most cheerful of the 2019 comic books, as far as Dick was concerned.

He did fare better in other media besides comic books, though. He transformed into Nightwing in Titans on tv, albeit after a very angsty period with lots of hallucinations. He was pretty much himself in the animated movie Hush and Young Justice: Outsiders and survived both.  

Let's hope 2020 will be a better year for Dickie...